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THE  CROWD  IN  PEACE  AND  WAR 


WORKS  BY  THE  SAME  AUTHOR 

The  Woodcutters  of  the  Netherlands  in  the   Fifteenth 

Century,  1884 
The  Artistic  Development  of  Reynolds  and  Gainsborough,  1886 
Early  Flemish  Artists,   1887 
The  Literary  Remains  of  Albrecht  Durer,  1889 
The  Dawn  of  Art,  1891 

Climbers  Guides  to  the  Pennine  and  Lepontine  Alps,  1890,  etc. 
Climbing  and  Exploration    in  the   Karakoram-Himalayas,  1894 
The  Alps  from  End  to  End,  1895 
The  First  Crossing  of  Spitsbergen,  1897 
With  Ski  and  Sledge  over  Arctic  Glaciers,  1898 
The  Bolivian  Andes,  1901 
The  Domain  of  Art,  1902 
Early  Tuscan  Artists,  1902 
Aconcagua  and  Tierra  del  Fuego,  1902 
Great  Masters,  1904 
The  Alps,  1904 

Early  Dutch  and  English  Voyages  to  Spitsbergen,  1904 
No  Man's  Land  {History  of  Spitsbergen),  1906 
The  Sport  of  Collecting,  1914 


THE    CROWD    IN 
PEACE   AND   WAR 


BY 

SIR  MARTIN  CONWAY 

LATE 

ROSCOE  PROFESSOR  OF  ART,  LIVERPOOL 

SLADE  PROFESSOR  OF  ART,  CAMBRIDGE 

PRESIDENT  OF  THE  ALPINE  CLUB 


Nullum  esse  librum  tarn  malum 
ut  non  ex  aliqua  parte  prodesset. 

Pliny  the  Elder 


LONGMANS,    GREEN,    AND    CO. 

FOURTH  AVENUE  &  3OTH  STREET,  NEW  YORK 

LONDON,  BOMBAY,  CALCUTTA,  AND  MADRAS 

1915 


COPYRIGHT,     igiS,    BY 
LONGMANS,    GREEN,    AND    CO. 


rnORKJSOA  MEMORIAL  Ll&RAflY 


THE-PLIMPTON'PRBSS 
NORWOOD-MASS-U-S'A 


H/A 


M.  M. 

SOCERO    DILECTO 

CONSILII    LUCULENTI    MEMOR 

ET   GRATISSIMUS 

M.  C. 


434433 


CONTENTS 

CHAPTER  PAGE 

I.  Kinds  op  Crowds  K 3 

II.  The  Nature  of  Crowds  K 25 

HE.  Crowd-Units 39 

IV.  Crowd-Continuity 57 

V.  Crowd-Instincts    .)< 70 

VI.  Crowd-Compellers 88 

VII.  Crowd-Exponents 101 

VIII.  Crowd-Representatives 114 

IX.  Crowd-Organisation  .^ 127 

X.  Government  and  tiie  Crowd 137 

XI.  Liberty  and  Freedom 166 

XII.  Education 182 

XIII.  Morals 193 

XIV.  Religion 213 

XV.  Overcrowds 242 

XVI.  War:  Its  Cause  and  Cure 265 

XVII.  The  Contest  of  Ideals 285 

XVIII.  The  Crowd  at  War 298 

XIX.  The  Value  of  the  Crowd 307 

XX.  The  Just  Mean 318 


THE  CROWD   IN  PEACE  AND  WAR 


The  Crowd  in  Peace  and  War 

CHAPTER  I 
KINDS  OF   CROWDS 

MAN  has  never  decided  whether  to  be  a  gregarious 
animal  or  not.  Individualism  and  socialism  at- 
tract him  alternately.  He  swings  like  a  pendu- 
lum from  the  one  to  the  other.  At  times  he  merges  himself 
completely  in  some  group  or  crowd  and  loses  his  identity 
there  like  a  sheep  in  a  flock.  Then  he  lives  and  moves 
and  has  his  being  in  the  crowd.  He-foHows  ite  -routine; 
esprit  de eorps  determines  his  ideals  and  dictates  his  emo- 
tions. He  is  like  a  soldier  in  a  regiment,  or  a  cell  in  liv- 
ing tissue:  a  mere  unit  whose  life,  joy,  and  passion  it  is  to 
contribute  his  portion  of  vitality  and  power  to  the  larger 
life  of  the  whole  group,  or  as  our  brave  soldiers  say,  "to 
do  his  bit." 

At  other  times  man  adopts  the  attitude  of  complete  de- 
tachment from  his  fellows,  like  Thoreau  at  Walden,  or  a 
Theban  hermit  in  his  desert  cave.  The  crowd  then  is 
nothing  to  him.  His  aim  is  to  be  self-sufficing  —  to  think 
his  own  thoughts,  go  his  own  ways,  provide  for  his  own 
needs,  and  perhaps  save  his  own  soul.  He  no  longer 
resembles  a  sheep  in  a  flock  or  a  wolf  in  a  pack,  but  re- 

3 


The   Crowd   in    Peace   and   War 

mains  aloof,  like  some  lonely  condor  circling  in  the  blue, 
with  even  the  high  Andes  far  beneath  him,  and  his  nearest 
fellow,  visible  only  to  vision  keen  as  his,  likewise  isolated 
miles  away  in  the  depths  of  the  air. 

Much  has  in  recent  years  been  written  about  the  Crowd 
and  its  psychology,  yet  for  the  most  part  from  quite  re- 
stricted points  of  view,  as  if  the  only  Crowds  to  be  con- 
sidered were  but  two,  —  the  Mob  and  the  Public:  the  Mob 
as  any  disorganised  or  weakly  organised  assemblage  of 
people;  the  Public  as  what  we  all  know  and  need  not 
define,  the  general  body  of  inhabitants  of  a  given  area 
organised  mostly  by  newspapers.  Yet  there  are  many 
other  crowds  to  which  an  individual  may  belong  beside 
these  two,  and  it  may  serve  to  clear  the  ground  if  we  con- 
sider a  few  of  them  briefly. 

To  begin  with  there  are  what  we  ordinarily  designate  as 
crowds:  that  is  to  say  assemblages  of  human  beings, 
all  physically  present  together  at  one  time  and  within 
one  area,  each  individual  conscious  of  the  presence 
of  the  next.  A  mob  is  the  least  admired  form  of  such  a 
crowd,  the  term  usually  implying  not  merely  the  simul- 
taneous presence  of  a  number  of  people,  but  that  their 
behaviour  is  more  or  less  disorderly.  A  public  meeting 
is  usually  a  well-behaved  crowd,  but  may  at  any  time 
degenerate  into  a  mob;  it  is  to  a  large  extent  a  chance 
assembly  of  people  who  have  never  come  together  in  their 
entirety  before  and  will  never  assemble  again,  the  link 
between  them  being  therefore  felt  to  be  of  a  transitory 
kind.  A  theatre  audience  is  of  like  character  in  con- 
stitution, but  differs  from  a  public  meeting  in  that  it 
assembles  for  another  end  and  knows  what  it  expects  to 

4 


Kinds   of  Crowds 

experience.  Different  again  is  a  congregation  and  on  a 
higher  plane  both  of  organisation  and  purpose;  whilst  a 
regiment  on  parade  is  likewise  and  obviously  another 
and  more  elaborately  organised  assemblage. 

More  important  for  the  purposes  of  our  present  scru- 
tiny are  the  groups  of  human  beings  not  physically  assem- 
bled together  within  sight  and  hearing  of  one  another 
at  any  time  and  place,  yet  forming  collective  bodies 
which  have  a  separate  and  conscious  existence.  Them 
also,  for  brevity  and  convenience'  sake,  one  may  likewise 
designate  as  crowds.  Such  are  the  Race,  the  Empire,  the 
Nation,  each  possessing  consciousness  of  a  separate  exist- 
ence and  an  internal  unity.  Even  the  English-speaking 
race,  vaguely  definable  though  it  be,  really  exists  as  a 
true  crowd  and  knows  that  it  has  a  certain  separate  life 
apart  from  the  other  races  that  fill  the  world.  Its  life  is 
no  doubt  a  very  low  form,  its  self-consciousness  weak,  but 
if  it  realised  that  an  attempt  were  being  made  by  any 
other  race  to  supplant  it,  it  would  defend  its  existence 
with  vigour.  Some  Empires  are  more  self-conscious  be- 
cause more  highly  organised  than  others,  but  even 
one  whose  organisation  is  as  rudimentary  as  that  of 
Great  Britain  is  capable  of  manifesting  amazing  crowd- 
life  when  attacked  —  a  statement  which  to-day  needs  no 
emphasis.  The  next  geographically  limited  crowd-unit 
is  the  Nation,  which,  though  it  may  include  elements  of 
various  races,  is  yet  more  vital  and  more  self-conscious, 
because  more  highly  organised,  than  they  can  be.  Na- 
tions, in  fact,  are  the  largest  organised  crowds  that  exist. 
It  is  an  exception  to  find  an  individual  citizen  of  any 
nation  whose  citizenship  is  not  a  strong  element  in  his 

5 


The   Crowd  in    Peace   and   War 

individual  character  and  a  determining  factor  in  many  of 
the  most  important  actions  of  his  life.  Every  citizen  of  a 
nation  carries  the  national  type  about  with  him.  It  has 
been  wittily  said  of  the  insular  Briton  that  "every  English- 
man is  an  island."  Mr.  Justice  Darling  retorted  that 
"every  American  is  a  continent."  The  national  charac- 
ter finds  queer  ways  of  expressing  itself  in  some  indi- 
viduals, but  in  almost  all  it  is  at  any  rate  present  in  the 
form  called  Patriotism.  Patriotism  is  the  emotion  of  his 
national  crowd  in  the  heart  of  the  individual  citizen. 

Besides,  or  rather  contained  within,  a  nation  are  many 
smaller  crowds  geographically  defined.  The  people  of  a 
county  are  a  crowd;  more  consciously  are  those  of  a  city 
or  town.  The  inhabitants  of  a  village  or  parish  often 
feel  themselves  to  be  a  separate  crowd  with  a  crowd-life 
and  consciousness  of  their  own.  Further  divisions  and 
sub-divisions  might  be  catalogued,  but  let  the  foregoing 
suffice,  not  for  definition  but  for  illustration. 

A  geographical  limitation  is  only  one  of  the  possible 
circumscriptions  of  a  crowd.  The  most  notable  organised 
crowds  within  a  nation  are  political  parties,  and  their  life 
I  is  full  of  vigour,  though  they  are  not  geographically  de- 
fined. Classes  are  likewise  crowds,  some  more  self-con- 
scious than  others,  but  all  to  some  extent  possessed  of 
the  elements  of  a  separate  being.  "Labour"  nowadays 
has  become  keenly  conscious  of  its  separate  crowd-life; 
"Society"  is  likewise  thus  conscious,  but  less  keenly.  The 
various  professions  have  a  crowd-life  more  or  less  self- 
conscious.  Medical  practitioners,  for  instance,  form  a 
group  with  a  strong  independent  life  and  a  high  internal 

organisation.     The  body  of  lawyers  is  only  a  little  less 

6 


Kinds   of  Crowds 

vigorous  in  its  group-life  than  the  body  of  medical  men, 
and  other  professions  congregate  apart  in  a  descending 
order  of  vitality.  It  is  possible  or  even  probable  that 
two  rat-catchers,  otherwise  strangers,  might  feel  them- 
selves linked  by  a  bond  which  would  stand  some  slight 
strain  if  the  occasion  arose  to  put  it  to  the  test. 

Ecclesiastical  and  religious  bodies  of  all  kinds  are 
crowds,  often  highly  organised  and  keenly  conscious  of 
their  separate  existence.  The  sub-divisions  of  a  Church, 
the  High  Churchmen,  the  Evangelicals,  and  so  forth,  are 
no  less  alive,  and  parishes  have  a  vitality  of  their  own 
which  is  not  the  same  as  that  of  a  given  congregation  at 
any  moment  assembled  for  worship.  Clubs  and  Societies 
are  crowds,  sometimes  loosely  organised  and  scarcely 
conscious  at  all,  sometimes  highly  organised  and  keenly 
self-conscious.  More  vigorous  than  most  in  their  crowd- 
consciousness  are  the  educational  organisations:  schools, 
colleges,  universities,  the  actual  members  of  which  in  the 
heyday  of  their  career  are  perhaps  more  sensible  of  their 
membership  of  the  collective  body  to  which  they  belong 
than  of  any  other  circumstance  of  their  existence. 

Most  highly  organised  of  all  is  a  disciplined  regiment 
of  soldiers  (not  merely  when  on  parade),  which  is  con- 
structed, drilled,  and  in  every  detail  of  life  ordained  to 
the  end  that  the  unit  may  be  completely  merged  in  the 
whole  and,  as  far  as  can  possibly  be  attained,  may  lose 
all  individual  will,  feeling,  fear,  or  independence,  and  be- 
come one  in  act,  in  thought,  and  above  all  things  in  emo- 
tion —  in  what  we  call  esprit  de  corps  —  with  the  body 
of  which  he  for  the  time  being  forms  a  part. 

These  and  the  like  aggregations  of  men  possess  the 

7 


The   Crowd  in    Peace  and   War 

crowd  quality,  but  we  regard  them  with  different  degrees 
of  admiration  or  sympathy.  It  is  with  human  crowds  as 
with  groups  of  animals ;  some  are  regarded  as  superior  to 
others.  Thus,  for  instance,  what  we  think  of  a  hive  of 
bees,  a  flock  of  sheep,  a  pack  of  wolves,  is  shown  by  the 
way  we  use  the  same  terms  when  applied  to  men.  We 
speak  of  a  "hive  of  industry,"  of  a  Parson  and  his  "flock," 
of  a  "pack  of  fools,"  thereby  indicating  admiration  of 
the  bees,  sympathy  for  the  sheep,  and  contempt  for  the 
wolves.  So  the  word  "Mob"  implies  contempt  and 
hatred  of  the  thing,  and  for  other  groups  we  have  dif- 
ferent grades  of  esteem.  It  will  be  found  that  the  meas- 
ure of  those  grades  depends  not  so  much  on  the  degree 
of  organisation  of  the  crowd  as  on  the  ideal  by  which  it 
is  animated. 

A  multitude  of  people  walking  in  the  street,  each  about 
his  own  business,  may  form  a  dense  mass  of  humanity,  but 
they  are  not  a  crowd  until  something  occurs  to  arrest 
their  common  attention  and  inspire  in  them  a  common 
emotion.  Any  sudden  danger  or  startling  event  suffices 
to  bring  them  into  the  first  rudimentary  crowd-relation 
with  one  another.  A  horse  falls  and  people  gather  round ; 
a  couple  of  vehicles  collide  and  a  more  interested  crowd 
collects;  a  house  catches  fire  and  the  neighbourhood  is 
filled  with  an  excited  throng.  Such  crowds,  till  the 
police  take  them  in  hand,  are  altogether  disorganised,  and 
rapidly  degenerate  into  mobs.  That  fact  is  so  well 
realised  that  the  police  have  been  trained  in  every  coun- 
try as  rudimentary  crowd-organisers,  and  do  the  work 
almost  as  well  as  it  can  be  done,  on  the  spur  of  the  mo- 
ment.    These    chance    assemblages,    collected    by    any 


Kinds   of  Crowds 

accident,  do  not,  however,  long  remain  passive  if  events 
of  interest  confront  them.  In  the  case  of  a  fire,  for  in- 
stance, something  is  sure  to  occur  that  will  kindle  their 
passions.  The  mere  event  excites  them.  Soon  they 
become  vocal.  By  shouting  they  further  excite  one 
another.  They  are  sure  to  be  warmly  sympathetic;  they 
will  cheer  the  smallest  act  of  courage;  they  will  also  be 
profoundly  sentimental,  as  is  shown  for  example  if  women 
or  children  are  imperilled.  There  is  no  present  need  to 
elaborate  what  every  one  knows. 

A  band  of  music  is  the  easiest  of  all  agencies,  not 
merely  for  bringing  a  crowd  together  but  for  kindling 
the  emotion  that  provides  it  at  once  with  a  rudimentary 
structure  and  a  common  emotion.     Men  marching  be- 
hind a  band  in  rhythmic  step  are  already  beginning  to 
crystallize  into  an  integral  group.     They  feel  as  one  and 
move  as  one  so  long  as  the  music  holds  them.     Hence 
the  efficiency  of  a  band  as  a  military  recruiting  agency 
and  a  stimulus  to  the  regiment  when  formed.     A  band, 
says    Mr.    Kipling,    "revives    memories    and    quickens 
associations;  it  opens  and  unites  the  hearts  of  men  more 
surely  than  any  other  appeal  ...     A  wise  and  sym- 
pathetic bandmaster  .  .  .  can  lift  a  battalion  out  of 
depression,   cheer  its   sickness,   and   steady  and  recall 
it  to  itself  in  times  of  almost  unendurable  strain." 
Religious   revivalists   long   ago   realised   the   value   of 
music  as  an  aid  to  their  propaganda.     Years  ago  Moody 
and  Sankey  made  music  an  important  part  of  their  spec- 
tacular assemblies.     Later  came  Torrey  and  Alexander, 
likewise  from  America,  and  this  is  what  one  of  them  said 
to  a  "Daily  Mail"  reporter.     "There  has  never  been  a 

9 


The   Crowd  in    Peace   and   War 

great  revival  without  music.  Hymns  prepare  the 
ground  for  the  exhortation  of  the  preacher.  Business 
'men  come  to  the  meetings  full  of  their  worries  and 
'cares,  and  in  no  state  of  mind  to  derive  the  fullest  bene- 
'fit  from  spoken  lessons  and  advice.  A  swinging  hymn 
'makes  them  forget  all  their  troubles.  Half  an  hour 
'of  bright  revival  hymns  kneads  the  congregation  into 
'one  body.  It  is  possible  to  end  the  musical  part  of  the 
'service  too  early,  and  it  is  always  my  aim  to  get  every 
'member  of  the  congregation  to  sing  before  the  hymns 
'are  finished.  .  .  .  Unanimous  congregational  singing  is 
'of  the  utmost  value  in  a  revival."  The  arts  of  crowd- 
management  could  scarcely  be  better  illustrated. 

The  oldest  and  still  the  most  powerful  crowd-former  is 
the  orator;  that  in  fact  is  the  purpose  for  which  oratory 
exists.  It  was  formed  in  the  presence  of  crowds  and 
developed  by  the  reaction  of  crowd  and  speaker  on  one 
another.  A  man  with  an  oratorical  gift  can  swiftly  con- 
vert a  chance  assemblage  into  a  crowd.  We  see  this 
accomplished  not  infrequently  in  the  public  streets.  A 
speaker  stands  at  some  corner  and  begins  his  harangue. 
At  first  he  is  like  a  fallen  cab-horse;  a  few  folk  stop  out 
of  idle  curiosity  rather  to  look  at  him  than  to  listen. 
He  says  something  that  catches  their  attention,  and  they 
lose  the  listless  attitude  of  the  mere  loafer.  Others  are 
thereby  attracted  to  join  them.  The  speaker  begins  to 
take  hold  of  them.  He  makes  them  laugh;  he  draws  forth 
their  applause.  They  become  the  centre  of  a  continually 
widening  assembly.  At  first  the  speaker's  ideas  are 
nothing  to  them.  Presently  they  become  interested;  be- 
fore long  they  are  taken  captive.     The  orator  mesmer- 

10 


Kinds   of  Crowds 

ises  rather  than  convinces  them.  They  shout  applause 
and  their  enthusiasm  is  kindled.  They  become  a  group 
with  an  idea,  and  in  the  heat  of  that  emotion  they  may 
be  led  to  act  in  a  remarkable  manner,  as  the  individuals 
composing  the  group  could  never  have  been  brought  to 
act  had  they  been  reasoned  with,  one  by  one,  by  ever  so 
many  separate  archangels. 

Evangelistic  revival  meetings  present  these  phenom- 
ena in  a  well-recognised  form.  Here,  for  instance,  is  a 
cutting  from  a  recent  American  newspaper,  describing  the 
feats  of  "Billy"  Sunday.  "Philadelphia,  Jan.  24,  1915. 
"All  records  for  a  day's  quota  of  trail-hitters  were  broken 
"to-day  when  1,445  men,  among  them  ex-Sheriff  David 
"Baird,  the  old  Republican  boss  of  Camden,  walked  up 
"the  sawdust-covered  aisles  of  the  Tabernacle,  at  Nine- 
"teenth  and  Vine  Streets,  took  Billy  Sunday  by  the  hand 
"and  told  him  that  they  accepted  Christ  as  their  Saviour. 
"Never  in  nearly  twenty  years  of  evangelism  has  he 
"accomplished  such  results  as  these  in  a  single  day.  Five 
"hundred  and  twenty-three  were  converted  at  the  night 
"service  after  the  most  spectacular  platform  performance 
"to  which  the  evangelist  has  treated  Philadelphia  since 
"his  arrival  in  the  city." 

The  audiences  at  such  meetings  are  brought  together 
as  a  crowd  that  watches  a  fire  is  formed,  by  the  mere 
desire  to  be  present  at  an  event.  They  come  to  see 
something  happen.  The  spell-binder  gets  hold  of  them, 
just  as  a  mesmerist  attracts  examples  from  his  audience, 
and  causes  them  to  provide  the  very  sight  they  came  to 
see. 

It  is  sometimes  easy  to  note  the  moment  when  a  chance 

11 


The   Crowd  in    Peace  and  War 

assembly  becomes  an  integral  crowd,  possessed  by  a  com- 
mon emotion  which  swamps  and  obliterates  the  individual 
mind.  Thus,  for  instance,  I  myself  was  present  a  good 
many  years  ago  in  the  smoking-room  of  an  Atlantic  liner, 
when  the  usual  daily  auction-sale  was  taking  place  of  the 
numbers  drawn  for  the  pool  on  the  count  of  miles  run  in 
the  current  twenty-four  hours.  It  was  the  first  day  out, 
and  the  smoking-room  assemblage  had  scarcely  begun  to 
be  conscious  of  itself.  The  auctioneer  was  not  very 
eloquent  and  sales  were  slow;  bids  of  from  £l  to  £2  were 
obtained  with  difficulty.  Several  numbers  had  been  thus 
sold  and  the  next  in  order  was  offered.  There  was  nothing 
special  in  the  nature  of  the  chances  to  make  it  more  desir- 
able than  its  predecessors,  but  for  some  obscure  reason 
the  room  woke  up.  Something  was  said  by  the  auctioneer 
that  raised  a  laugh;  some  repartee  came  from  the  room. 
A  wave  of  emotion  swept  through  the  men  present;  they 
suddenly  became  a  crowd.  Bids  followed  one  another 
in  rapid  succession.  An  atmosphere  of  excitement  and 
speculation  was  created,  and  the  number  was  knocked 
down  for  £52,  when  its  despised  predecessor  had  fetched 
but  thirty  shillings.  Frequenters  of  other  kinds  of  auc- 
tions could  recall  similar  experiences.  Prices  are  as 
often  determined  by  mere  crowd-enthusiasm  as  by  the 
cold  value  of  the  things  disposed  of. 

A  great  deal  of  art  may  be  employed  by  the  managers 
of  a  public  assembly  to  induce,  in  the  people  present,  the 
kind  of  sudden  overwhelming  enthusiasm  of  which  large 
bodies  of  men  are  capable,  such  enthusiasm,  however 
created,  being  afterwards  a  valuable  asset  to  a  movement, 
and  often,  as  we  shall  hereafter  see,  leaving  permanent 

12 


Kinds   of  Crowds 

traces  upon  the  individuals  who  were  affected  by  it.  Let 
me  cite  an  illustration  from  the  United  States  —  the 
country  par  excellence  of  crowds.  Perhaps  the  most 
remarkable  American  crowds  present  at  one  time  in  the 
flesh,  whose  doings  are  carefully  put  on  record,  are  the 
great  Conventions  of  the  two  chief  political  parties,  which 
assemble  once  every  four  years  to  nominate  a  candidate 
for  the  Presidency  and  perform  various  other  functions. 
Such  a  convention  was  that  of  the  Democratic  Party, 
which  assembled  in  Kansas  City  in  the  early  days  of  July, 
1900,  and  nominated  Mr.  Bryan.  I  select  it  because  I 
was  interested  at  the  time  in  its  behaviour  and  preserved 
the  records  which  now  lie  before  me.  I  select  merely 
one  incident  therefrom  to  illustrate  how  a  crowd's  en- 
thusiasm may  be  organised  by  wily  leaders.  The  moment 
came  when  the  report  of  the  Committee  on  Platform  was 
to  be  read.  The  Platform  to  be  thus  presented  was  that 
upon  which  the  party  were  to  appeal  to  the  country,  and, 
of  course,  it  was  the  purpose  of  such  a  document  to  arouse 
enthusiasm.  Senator  James  K.  Jones  of  Arkansas  was 
Chairman  of  the  Committee  and  should  in  the  ordinary 
course  have  read  the  report  to  the  Convention. 

"Senator  Jones  has,"  said  the  reporter  of  the  New  York  "Sun," 
"a  very  sturdy  voice  himself,  but  he  announced  that  Senator 
"Ben  Tillman  would  read  the  committee's  report.  Senator 
"Tillman  has  a  voice  like  a  wagon  running  over  a  corduroy  road. 
"He  seemed  to  have  committed  that  report  to  memory.  He 
"certainly  delivered  it  in  splendid  fashion.  He  made  every 
"possible  point  tell.  When  Senator  Tillman  came  to  the  words 
"that  'Imperialism  is  the  paramount  issue  of  this  campaign,' 
"there  were  only  a  few  cheers.     Senator  Tillman  looked  up  sur- 

13 


The   Crowd   in    Peace   and   War 

"prised.  Then  he  turned  to  Chairman  Richardson  and  then  to 
"Senator  Jones.  Then  he  looked  at  Sergeant-at-Arms  John  S. 
"Martin.  Something  was  amiss.  Something  had  gone  wrong. 
"Mr.  Martin  waved  his  arms  in  his  excitement.  He  weighs 
"300  pounds.  He  jumped  down  from  his  perch  on  the  platform 
"on  to  the  gangway  running  before  the  platform  and  danced 
"about  in  anger.  The  ushers  and  messengers  were  quickly 
"around  him.  There  was  a  hurried  confabulation  and  Mr. 
"Martin  swung  his  head  and  his  arms  back  towards  Senator 
"Tillman  upon  the  platform.  The  messengers  and  ushers 
"darted  here  and  there  among  the  delegates  and  a  hundred  of 
"other  messengers  and  ushers  rushed  up  into  the  galleries.  All 
"were  loaded  with  American  flags.  They  quietly  distributed 
"these  flags  among  the  delegates  and  the  audience.  In  a  jiffy 
"Mr.  Martin  waved  his  arms  up  at  the  band  and  it  quickly  came 
"out  with  the  'Star  Spangled  Banner.'  Even  then  there  was 
"no  demonstration.  Senator  Tillman  turned  full  face  to  the 
"audience  and  roared  with  all  his  might,  'I  say  again  that  Im- 
"  'perialism  is  the  paramount  issue  of  this  campaign.'  The  band, 
"which  had  halted  a  moment,  came  out  again  with  the  'Star 
"  '  Spangled  Banner.'  The  delegates  and  the  audience  unfolded 
"  their  flags.  A  great  flag  which  was  hung  from  the  steel  trusses 
"of  the  convention  hall  just  over  the  platform  was  dropped. 
"This  was  the  legend  upon  it:  'The  Constitution  and  the 
"'flag,  one  and  inseparable,  now  and  forever;  the  flag  of  the 
"   republic  forever,  of  an  empire  never.' 

"Then  came  one  of  the  greatest  scenes  that  this  convention 
"has  had.  Upon  all  the  little  flags  which  the  hundreds  of  mes- 
"sengers  and  ushers  had  distributed  were  printed  the  exact 
"words  on  the  big  flag  which  had  been  let  down  from  the  trusses. 
"The  audience  roared  with  enthusiasm.  The  delegates  grasped 
"their  standards  and  swung  them  over  their  heads.  Half  a 
"dozen  banners  were  waved  in  the  air.  One  of  them  read: 
"  'Lincoln  abolished  slavery  under  the  flag.     McKinley  restored 

14 


Kinds   of  Crowds 

"  'it.'  Another  read:  'What  would  Christ  do  in  the  Philippines?' 
"And  still  another  read:  'No  man  is  good  enough  to  govern 
" '  another  man  without  his  consent.  A.  Lincoln.'  Amid  the 
"tumultuous  cheers  the  band  was  heard  playing  'There'll  Be  a 
"  '  Hot  Time  in  the  Old  Town  to-night.'  The  delegates  began  to 
"carry  their  standards  around  the  hall.  The  flags,  thousands 
"upon  thousands  of  them,  were  waving,  and  it  was  a  vast  scene 
"of  colour.  The  cheers  were  riotous.  High  above  them  could 
"be  heard  the  rebel  yell,  'Hi,  hi,  hi,  hi,  ki,  ki,  ki!'  The  Boer 
"flag  was  brought  out  and  toted  around  the  hall,  and  the  band 
"played  America's  greatest  national  anthem,  'My  Country, 
" '  tis  of  Thee,'  which,  as  all  know,  from  time  immemorial  has 
"been  set  to  the  music  of  'God  Save  the  Queen.'  It  was  a  wild 
"scene.  It  was  a  pathetic  scene  to  some  who  had  observed 
"closely  the  fact  that  this  was  a  cut-and-dried  affair,  which  had 
"come  almost  near  failure.  It  was  not  a  spontaneous  outburst 
"for  the  flag.  It  had  been  worked  up  by  the  managers  of  this 
"convention.  The  demonstration  lasted  twelve  minutes.  Many 
"who  saw  it  will  never  forget  it." 

A  crowd,  in  the  sense  in  which  I  am  employing  the 
word,  can  be  formed  in  a  hundred  other  ways  than  by 
mere  physical  presence  together  at  one  time  and  place. 
Printing,  the  telegraph,  and  the  various  modern  inven- 
tions and  developments  we  are  all  familiar  with,  have 
made  crowd-formation  possible  without  personal  con- 
tact, as  they  have  also  made  the  gathering  together  of  an 
actual  assembly  far  more  easy  to  accomplish  than  it  was 
when  the  best  form  of  advertisement  was  the  town-crier. 
What  is  a  "movement"  but  the  formation  of  a  crowd? 
Public  meetings  and  the  like  agencies  may  be  employed 
to  initiate  it,  but  in  the  main  it  is  not  by  meetings  but 

by  the  printed  word  that  the  movement  is  spread  and 

15 


The   Crowd  in    Peace   and  War 

the  crowd  of  its  adherents  enlisted.  Nowadays  we  are 
all  of  us  crowd-assailed  at  any  hour  and  in  all  places. 
Clubs,  associations,  organisations  for  every  purpose  cease- 
lessly call  upon  each  to  join.  "Come  unto  us  and  we 
"with  you  will  be  potent;  come  unto  us  and  share  our 
"emotion;  come  unto  us  and  accomplish  together  some 
"heart's  desire."  Every  newspaper,  every  magazine, 
innumerable  agencies  intrude  upon  the  individual  and 
would  swallow  him  up,  would  capture  his  life  into  that  of 
their  larger  composite,  would  make  of  his  voice  a  trumpet 
for  their  own  creed  or  aspiration.  What  indeed  are 
newspapers  but  crowd-formers,  and  the  habitual  readers 
of  a  newspaper  but  a  crowd?  Newspapers  indeed  are 
read  by  individuals,  just  as  individual  ears  hear  the  voice 
of  an  orator,  but  they  are  not  addressed  to  individuals, 
nor  does  a  reader  read  them  in  the  same  attitude  of  mind 
as  when  he  reads  a  private  letter.  A  newspaper  reader 
is  conscious  of  his  crowd  as  he  reads;  he  is  a  Tory  or  a 
Liberal  or  whatnot,  and  it  is  as  such  that  he  is  addressed 
and  as  such  that  he  reads.  A  newspaper  is  as  much  con- 
ceived and  produced  for  a  crowd  as  is  any  orator's  har- 
angue. The  story  is  told  how  an  old  journalist  said  to  a 
young  one,  "Remember  when  you  are  writing  for  your 
"paper  that  you  are  like  a  man  shouting  from  a  fourth- 
" floor  window  to  a  crowd  passing  in  the  street."  The 
purpose  of  journalism  is,  in  fact,  crowd-formation  and 
crowd-direction,  and  though  journals  incidentally  serve 
the  needs  of  individuals  in  many  minor  ways,  they  do  not 
exist  for  the  individual  but  for  some  crowd  which  it  is 
their  aim  to  direct. 

Religion  has  been  a  potent  crowd-forming  agency.     The 

16 


Kinds   of  Crowds 

most  remarkable  example  in  the  world's  history  is  the 
religion  of  Islam.  It  was  born  in  the  heart  and  brain  of 
Mahommed,  and  within  a  hundred  years  after  the  Flight 
it  had  welded  its  adherents  into  a  victorious  host,  which, 
sweeping  forth  from  the  sparsely-peopled  deserts  of 
Arabia,  had  conquered  and  held  Syria,  Mesopotamia, 
Persia,  Egypt,  North  Africa,  and  Spain.  In  our  own  day 
the  followers  of  that  quaint  prophetess,  Mrs.  Eddy,  are 
already  counted  by  millions,  and  though  they  have  not 
gone  forth  conquering  and  to  conquer,  it  is  certain  that 
they  are  a  powerful  body.  The  philosophy  of  the  notori- 
ous Treitschke  within  the  lifetime  of  a  generation  has 
remade  the  German  people  on  a  new  model  and  threat- 
ened the  whole  basis  of  European  civilisation;  had  it 
not  been  for  the  power  of  organising  resistance  quickly 
and  over  a  large  area,  provided  by  modern  means  of 
intercourse  and  communication,  we  might  have  witnessed 
at  the  present  moment  a  German  repetition  of  the  suc- 
cesses of  conquering  Islam.  The  German-Turkish  alli- 
ance is  not  so  surprising  as  seems  to  have  been  generally 
thought,  for  Islam  and  Teutonism  have  much  in  common. 
A  new  political  theory  is  scarcely  less  efficient  as  a  crowd- 
former.  Who  could  have  supposed  when  Carlyle,  Ruskin, 
Kingsley,  and  a  few  others  began  their  onslaught  upon 
the  "Condition  of  England"  that  within  little  more  than 
half  a  century  the  axis  of  politics  would  have  been  shifted 
so  completely  as  it  has  been  in  consequence  of  the  new 
ideas  to  which  they  gave  expression?  The  Labour  Party 
in  England  to-day  perhaps  owes  more  to  the  writings  of 
Ruskin  than  to  any  other  impulse.  After  the  election  of 
1905,  when  numerous  Labour  Members  obtained  entry 

17 


The   Crowd  in    Peace   and   War 

into  the  House  of  Commons,  a  newspaper  had  the  good 
idea  to  inquire  of  them  what  books  read  by  them  had  had 
any  considerable  effect  on  them.  Many  replied  that  their 
reading  was  mainly  confined  to  newspapers,  but  a  large 
proportion  also  stated  that  they  had  read  Ruskin's  "Time 
and  Tide"  and  dated  much  of  their  activity  from  that 
reading. 

Philanthropic  movements  can  form  large  and  efficient 
crowds,  as  was  seen  for  example  in  the  anti-slavery  agi- 
tation. The  temperance  movement  has  produced  vigor- 
ous crowds,  and  so  on  a  smaller  scale  have  such  agitations 
as  those  which  protest  against  vaccination,  typhoid- 
innoculation,  vivisection,  and  so  forth.  These  and  other 
like  movements  avail  themselves  of  public  meetings  for 
their  propaganda,  but  the  crowds  they  form  and  by  which 
they  exist  are  mainly  collected  by  means  of  the  news- 
paper press.  Orators  provide  the  nucleus,  but  it  is  the 
press  that  builds  up  the  crowd  and  cements  its  organisa- 
tion. 

In  that  "dark  backward  and  abysm  of  time,"  when 
palaeolithic  man  alone  foreshadowed  the  human  race 
which  was  to  come,  it  is  safe  to  assert  that  there  were  no 
crowds  or  only  very  small  and  rudimentary  ones.  Palaeo- 
lithic man  was  a  hunter  or  a  root  digger.  His  awk- 
ward flint  weapons  were  useful  only  at  arm's  length.  He 
must  have  lain  in  wait  for  his  prey,  silently  in  secret 
places.  Probably  each  family  supplied  its  own  needs  and 
lived  apart;  but  a  family  is  not  a  crowd  and  possesses 
none  of  the  qualities  and  peculiarities  of  a  crowd.  Asser- 
tions on  unrecorded  happenings  in  so  remote  a  past  are 

vain,  but  we  can  at  least  imagine  a  strong  probability 

18 


Kinds   of  Crowds 

that  individualism  was  never  more  pronounced  than  in 
the  earliest  stages  of  human  development. 

When,  however,  we  come  to  neolithic  man  we  are  evi- 
dently in  the  presence  of  crowds.  Neolithic  man  lived 
in  communities,  had  invented  agriculture,  and  had  sub- 
jugated a  certain  number  of  domestic  animals.  The 
palaeolithic  family  was  replaced  by  the  neolithic  tribe. 
If  Adam  and  Eve  before  the  Fall  were  palaeolithic  indi- 
viduals, the  Tree  of  Knowledge  which  caused  them  to 
till  the  ground  turned  them  into  social  units.  Thence- 
forward the  internal  struggle  went  on,  between  man  the 
individual  and  man  the  crowd-unit,  which  has  lasted 
down  to  the  present  day  and  will  continue  until  civilisa- 
tion atrophies.  It  is  in  this  rivalry  between  individual 
instincts  and  social  claims  that  sin  finds  its  origin,  so  that 
a  profound  truth  underlies  the  legend  of  the  birth  of  sin 
accompanying  the  introduction  of  agriculture  in  conse- 
quence of  eating  the  fruit  of  the  Tree  of  Knowledge. 

An  important  element  in  the  forces  that  promote  crowd- 
formation  is  the  attractiveness  of  a  crowd  for  the  indi- 
vidual. The  ordinary  man  is  as  inevitably  drawn  toward 
a  crowd  as  a  needle  toward  a  magnet.  When  Pickwick 
was  being  carried  to  the  magistrate's  house,  accompanied 
by  a  shouting  crowd,  Sam  Weller  "stepped  aside  to  see 
"the  crowd  pass,  and  finding  that  they  were  cheering 
"away,  very  much  to  their  own  satisfaction,  forthwith 
"began  to  cheer  too,  with  all  his  might  and  main,"  being 
of  course  entirely  ignorant  of  his  master's  predicament 
or  the  cause  of  the  cheering.  The  moment  a  number  of 
people  are  seen  to  be  assembling  in  a  street  for  any  or  no 
visible  reason,  others  will  run  to  join  them,  and  the  larger 

19 


The   Crowd  in    Peace   and   War 

the  crowd  the  more  powerful  the  attraction  it  exercises. 
The  mere  expectation  that  any  announced  meeting  will 
be  large  tends  to  make  it  so.     The  knowledge  that  a 
movement  is  growing  tends  to  increase  its  growth.     Why 
do  newspapers  announce  the  extent  of  their  circulation? 
It  is  because  their  audience  is  a  crowd  and  attracts  others 
to  itself  the  more  powerfully  the  larger  it  is  said  to  be. 
Enthusiasm  has  a  tendency  to  spread  and  a  crowd  is  the 
agency,  a  larger  crowd  the  result,  of  such  spreading.     A 
large  school,  a  large  university,  is  more  attractive  to  most 
students  than  a  small  one.     The  smaller  body  may  even 
provide  a  better  education,  but  the  larger  invests  its 
members  with  a  greater  corporate  pride.     Attractiveness 
is,  in  fact,  an  element  of  vitality  possessed  by  all  crowds. 
I  cut  from  an  American  newspaper  (the  "Tribune," 
I  believe)  an  excellent  story  about  the  behaviour  on  a 
certain  occasion  of  the  boys  in  a  school  chapel.     It  illus- 
trates the  ease  with  which  a  crowd  of  lads  accustomed 
to  a  common  life  can  be  moved  to  act  as  a  unit  by  even 
a  slight  common  impulse.     The  preacher,  on  the  occasion 
in  question,  "was  not  of  the  sturdy  sort  that  college  men 
'take  to  at  the  first  glance,  and  he  had  a  lisp  in  his  voice 
'that  the  audience  tried  politely  to  forget.     Although 
'he  did  not  have  a  particularly  strong  sermon,  it  would 
'have  'passed  by,'  in  campus  language,  if  he  had  not 
'chosen  some  particularly  childish  stories  with  which  to 
'illustrate  his  text.     During  the  rendition  of  these  the 
'undergraduates  grew  more  and  more  restless,  until  the 
'climax  came.     He  finished  his  sermon  with  the  point 
'that  'weak  human  beings  have  to  be  assisted  to  climb 
"the  "ladder  of  life,"'  a  point  that  would  not  have  had 

20 


Kinds   of  Crowds 

the  effect  on  the  audience  that  it  did  had  it  not  been 
accompanied  by  the  illustration.  This  illustration  was 
of  a  boy  whom  the  preacher  named  'Willie,'  which  was 
enough  to  focus  all  the  eyes  in  the  chapel  on  him  at  once. 
'Willie,'  said  the  preacher,  'had  to  climb  the  stairs  to  get 
'  a  paper  of  pins  for  mamma,  and  mamma  was  at  the  bot- 
'tom  of  the  stairs  to  encourage  him.  "Now,  Willie," 
'said  mamma,  "you  go  up  the  stairs  and  mamma  will 
'  count  for  you.'" 

"The  undergraduates  squirmed  in  their  seats  at  this, 

and  looked  at  each  other  out  of  the  corners  of  their  eyes. 

" ' "  Now,  Willie,"  said  mamma,  "  count  the  steps.     One 

'"  —  two  —  three,"  and  Willie  counted  "One  —  two  — 

'  "three."  '     'Four  —  five' The  students  had  caught 

Willie's  enthusiasm  by  this  time,  and  began  to  count  with 
the  preacher,  half  audibly  at  first,  and  then,  as  the  spirit 
of  the  thing  took  them,  louder  and  louder  —  '  Four  — 
'five  —  six!'  In  less  time  than  it  takes  to  tell  it  the 
twelve  hundred  undergraduates  were  counting  with  the 
preacher,  who,  although  decidedly  aghast  at  the  com- 
motion he  had  caused,  had  to  continue.  '  Eight  —  nine 
' —  ten!'  at  the  end  of  which  the  preacher  in  unison  with 
the  entire  chapel  said,  'And  Willie  —  got  —  the  — 
pins! 

What  is  the  minimum  number  of  individuals  that  can 
form  a  crowd?  It  is  not  an  unimportant  question,  seeing 
that  individuals  and  crowds  act  on  quite  different  motives, 
individuals  being  directed  in  the  main  by  reason,  crowds 
by  emotion.  Is  a  Jury,  for  instance,  a  crowd  or  a  mere 
group  of  individuals?  Is  a  Cabinet  a  crowd?  These 
are  questions  of  importance,  for  they  lie  at  the  root  of 

21 


The   Crowd   in    Peace   and   War 

modern  systems  of  law  and  government.  An  essential 
quality  of  an  embodied  crowd  I  take  to  be  that  its 
numbers  are  too  large  for  general  conversation  to  be 
possible.  As  soon  as  such  a  group  comes  under  the 
control  of  an  orator  it  is  a  crowd.  The  essence  of  con- 
versation is  interruption,  the  power  and  right  of  an 
individual  to  break  in  upon  another's  monologue.  Con- 
versation is  essentially  a  process  of  give  and  take.  Its 
life  is  gone  the  moment  one  individual  takes  the  floor  and 
silences  the  rest.  I  believe  it  was  the  poet  Rogers  who 
wittily  said  that  the  number  at  a  dinner  party  should 
be  less  than  the  Muses  and  more  than  the  Graces.  Where 
more  than  nine  people  are  assembled  about  a  table  the 
danger  of  crowd-formation  arises.  Three  or  less  are  not 
a  party  at  all.  It  is  possible  for  each  of  a  party  of  nine 
to  retain  a  definite  consciousness  of  the  separate  personali- 
ties and  characters  of  the  other  eight,  and  to  address  his 
remarks  to  each  with  a  personal  quality  in  what  he  says, 
but  few  will  be  able  to  retain  such  consciousness  of  a  larger 
number;  the  moment  the  speaker  loses  that  conscious- 
ness of  each  person's  individuality  he  will  find  himself 
either  talking  to  his  neighbour  privately  or  addressing  the 
table  as  if  it  were  a  meeting.  Some  torrential  talkers 
treat  their  audience  always  as  if  it  were  an  assemblage. 
Such  was  the  late  Mr.  Gladstone.  For  him  a  single 
individual  might  seem  to  be  a  crowd.  "He  talks  to  me," 
said  Queen  Victoria,  "as  though  I  were  a  public  meeting." 
As  a  matter  of  fact  a  sovereign  is  a  kind  of  crowd,  or  should 
be,  as  we  shall  hereafter  note;  but  Queen  Victoria  was  the 
last  person  to  realise  this. 

Experience  proves  that  a  Jury  of  twelve  does  in  fact 

22 


Kinds   of  Crowds 

act  as  a  crowd,  and  it  is  probable  that  that  number  has 
been  in  process  of  time  arrived  at  because  it  is  the  mini- 
mum number  that  can  be  normally  relied  upon  so  to  act. 
As  a  rule  the  general  feeling  among  a  dozen  men  suffices 
to  carry  them  all  along  together  to  a  common  conclusion. 
Now  and  again  a  sturdy  individualist  may  turn  up 
amongst  the  dozen  and  the  result  be  disagreement,  but 
such  occasions  are  exceptional. 

A  modern  English  Cabinet  is  likewise  certainly  a  crowd, 
though  the  small  governing  committees  of  the  seventeenth 
and  eighteenth  centuries  out  of  which  it  has  been  developed 
were  not.  Hence  in  our  day  has  arisen  that  new  and  quite 
unconstitutional  feature,  the  inner  Cabinet,  of  whose 
structure  and  doings  the  public  is  fortunately  so  little 
informed.  Executive  Committees,  whether  for  the  gov- 
ernment of  a  nation  or  of  a  cricket  club,  can  never  in  fact 
be  crowds,  or,  if  they  are,  they  cease  to  be  executive.  A 
large  committee  is  of  necessity  inefficient  unless  it  in 
practice  delegates  its  functions  to  a  single  individual  and 
makes  him  despotic.  I  was  once  a  member  of  a  Com- 
mittee of  some  two  or  three  score  members,  whose  busi- 
ness it  was  to  decide  a  question  of  taste  in  relation  to  a 
proposed  public  building.  We  met  once  and  once  only, 
and  that  meeting  was  the  ineptest  I  have  ever  attended, 
To  take  counsel  with  sixty  is  not  possible.  Half  a  dozen 
talked  at  once.  No  one  could  at  the  same  time  get  at  the 
plans  and  show  to  the  rest  what  he  objected  to.  After 
two  or  three  hours  of  wild  discussion  one  man,  with  no 
pretensions  whatever  to  taste,  but  having  a  strong  view 
as  to  what  should  be  done  in  the  interest  of  his  own  de- 
partment, imposed  himself  upon  the  confused  welter  of 

23 


The   Crowd   in    Peace   and   War 

discordant  minds.  He  had  the  loudest  voice  and  could 
hold  out  against  the  attractions  of  lunch  longer  than  any 
of  the  others.  His  statements  were  clear,  his  resolution 
cut  and  dried,  and  eventually  the  majority  yielded.  One 
of  the  ugliest  of  modern  public  buildings  was  the  result. 
If  you  want  Parthenons,  or  Cathedrals  like  Rheims,  that 
is  not  the  way  to  get  them.  A  crowd  cannot  take  counsel. 
It  can  only  listen  to  competing  leaders  and  accept  one  of 
them.  Where  the  purpose  to  be  attained  cannot  so  be 
arrived  at,  a  crowd  is  impotent  and  should  not  to  that 
end  have  been  called  into  being. 


24 


CHAPTER  II 

THE  NATURE  OF  CROWDS 

ILLUSTRATING  by  concrete  examples  rather  than 
defining,  we  have  thus  far  endeavoured  to  show  the 
kind  of  human  aggregations  to  which  the  word 
"crowd"  may  be  applied,  and  the  kind  of  process 
by  which  such  crowds  are  called  into  existence.  It  is 
now  time  to  examine  the  nature  of  such  crowds  and  of 
the  individuals  composing  them,  and  to  consider  how  their 
internal  organisation  is  accomplished  and  with  what 
results. 

Y.  It  is  urged  by  some  that  a  crowd  is  to  be  regarded  as  a 
separate  living  entity,  a  being  with  a  beginning,  a  life, 
and  a  death  of  its  own.  A  crowd  is  not,  as  most  old 
writers  used  to  assume  it  to  be,  either  the  sum  or  the 
average  of  the  individuals  composing  it,  but  is  wholly 
different  in  kind  from  those  individuals  —  as  different  as 
is  an  animal  from  the  cells  of  which  the  tissue  of  its  body 
is  built  up!^  Radical  politicians  in  the  days  of  the  Reform 
Bill  asserted  that  the  proposed  extension  of  the  suffrage 
would  bring  to  the  counsels  of  the  nation  a  multitude  of 
judgments  arrived  at  by  as  many  individual  minds,  each 
guided  by  a  consideration  of  individual  interests.  The 
normal  voter  was  imagined  to  be  a  person  who,  whether 
foolishly  or  wisely,  thought  out  for  himself,  with  the 
assistance  of  the  speeches  and  writings  of  more  experi- 

25 


The   Crowd   in  Peace   and   War 

enced  persons,  what  his  interests  at  the  moment  were  in 
relation  to  legislation  proposed,  and  voted  accordingly. 

But  we  know  by  experience  that  the  ordinary  voter  does 
nothing  of  the  kind,  and  the  managers  o!  all  political 
parties  alike  take  care  that  he  shall  not.  The  ordinary 
voter  merely  catches  the  momentary  passion  of  one  of 
the  parties  in  the  political  campaign  and  off  he  :■ 
shouting,  betting  on  the  result,  and  finally  voting,  in 
much  the  same  attitude  of  mind  as  that  of  the  supporters 
of  one  side  or  the  other  in  a  great  football-match. 
^  The  opinion  of  a  crowd  has  no  relation  to  the  reasoned 
opinion  of  the  majority  of  its  members,  but  is  a  mere 
infectious  passion  which  sweeps  through  the  whole  body 
like  an  electric  current,  and  frequently  is  originated  and 
propagated  from  a  single  brain.  Once  a  crowd  is  really 
formed,  once  the  members  of  it  have  fallen  under  one 
another's  mesmerism,  "the  individual  withers  and  the" 
crowd  "is  more  and  more,"  the  individual  is  in  fact 
absorbed  for  the  time  being  into  the  crowd  and  merely 
contributes  his  life  to  the  vitality  of  the  collective  body.^ 
Thus,  in  the  excitement  of  a  battle,  the  soldier  is  wont 
to  lose  the  sense  of  his  individuality  so  completely  as 
sometimes  to  be  unconscious  of  a  severe  wound.  He  is 
entirely  absorbed  into  the  crowd.  Hence  his  loss  of  the 
fear  that  is  so  commonly  felt  by  soldiers  on  the  eve  of 
battle.  Losing  himself  he  loses  the  desire  of  self-preserva- 
tion, and  fear  only  comes  upon  him  when  the  structure 
of  his  crowd  is  broken  up  and  panic  sets  in.  The  typical 
coward  is  an  unmesmerisable  person,  one  who  cannot 
merge  his  individuality  into  the  crowd,  but  retains  always 
the  sense  of  self  and  with  it  the  desire  of  self-preservation. 

26 


The   Nature   of  Crowds 

Such  a  person,  in  face  of  an  enemy,  feels  himself  to  be  one 
against  a  thousand  and  is  afraid.  Few  individuals  can 
face  a  hostile  crowd  without  fear.  A  woman  feels  herself 
to  be  in  this  position  as  against  the  mass  of  men,  hence 
her  constitutional  and  proper  timidity.  The  really  brave 
man  is  he  who  can  fearlessly  face  a  multitude  alone;  but 
such  men  are  rare.  Commonplace  bravery  is  mere  loss 
of  individuality  in  a  fighting  crowd.  Hence  the  purpose 
of  regimental  organisation  to  integrate  the  units  and 
strengthen  the  regiment's  power  of  absorption.  The  kind 
of  man  who  cannot  be  thus  absorbed  is  the  constitutional 
coward.  He  is  an  undesirable  unit  whose  tendency  is  to 
disintegrate  the  crowd  in  which  he  is  placed.  He  should 
be  gotten  rid  of,  but  why  should  he  be  shot?  It  is  a  weak- 
ness of  universal  compulsory  military  service  that  it  must 
sweep  together  into  the  ranks  many  such  undesirables, 
who  may  be  good  enough  human  material  nevertheless, 
but  not  for  fighting  purposes. 

Terror,  has  no  unifying  force.  Terror  scatters;  pluck 
unites.  Hence  the  crowd-sung  prestige  of  bravery  and 
the  crowd-contemmed  disgrace  of  fear.  Courage  is  the 
highest  crowd-virtue,  because  it  makes  for  the  crowd's 
success.  Fear  is  the  worst  of  crowd  vices,  because  it  makes 
for  crowd-disintegration.  But  should  individuals  neces- 
sarily share  these  judgments?  Cunning  and  foresight  or 
prudence  may  be  as  efficient  in  preserving  the  life  of  an 
individual  as  pluck;  indeed  they  may  be  more  efficient. 
It  is  by  them  that  women  have  oftenest  preserved  their 
offspring.  But  cunning  in  a  man  is  not  a  crowd  virtue. 
It  was  the  virtue  of  the  weakly  organised  people  of  the 
hunting  stage,  and  in  modern  life  it  is  the  main  virtue  of 

27 


The   Crowd  in    Peace   and   War 

the  criminal  classes,  who  are  survivals  of  prehistoric  men. 
Cunning  and  lack  of  cohesion  characterise  the  criminal  — 
a  thorough  individualist.  But  cunning  is  not  infectious. 
It  does  not  inspire  a  crowd.  It  has  no  co-ordinating 
effect.  Pluck  is  infectious.  The  truly  brave  man,  who 
never  loses  his  head  but  remains  under  all  circumstances 
fully  self-commanded,  never  fails  to  inspire  a  like  power 
in  his  comrades  to  a  greater  or  less  extent.  His  virtue  is 
the  most  precious  of  all  to  a  crowd,  and  his  reputation 
(that  is  to  say  the  crowd's  opinion  of  him)  stands  highest 
of  all. 

The  difference  in  character  between  a  crowd  and 
the  individuals  composing  it  leaps  to  the  eye  the  moment 
the  crowd  is  regarded  dispassionately  by  a  cool  and  de- 
tached observer.  Note,  for  example,  the  different  way  in 
which  a  very  small  joke  will  appeal  to  an  individual  and 
to  a  crowd.  What  would  scarcely  raise  a  smile  when 
spoken  to  an  individual  will  raise  roars  of  laughter  from  a 
crowd.  A  sentiment  which,  addressed  to  an  individual, 
would  seem  the  feeblest  platitude  will  be  received  by  an 
audience  with  rounds  of  applause.  Here  is  a  concrete 
instance.  Mr.  Asquith,  on  the  2d  of  October,  1914, 
addressed  a  most  important  meeting  at  the  Guildhall  of 
the  City  of  London  on  the  causes  of  the  Great  War.  In 
the  course  of  his  speech  he  made  the  following  very  simple 
remarks  in  reference  to  the  modern  German  dogma  that 
"force  is  the  test  and  measure  of  right":  — 

"It  is  one  of  those  products  of  German  genius  which, 
"whether  or  not  it  was  intended  exclusively  for  home 
"consumption,  has,  I  am  happy  to  say,  not  found  a  market 
"abroad,  and  certainly  not  within  the  boundaries  of  the 

28 


The   Nature   of  Crowds 

"British  Empire.  We  still  believe  here,  old-fashioned 
"people  as  we  are,  in  the  sanctity  of  treaties,  that  the 
"weak  have  rights,  and  that  the  strong  have  duties,"  — 
and  so  forth.  It  is  all  sound  common  sense,  clearly  ex- 
pressed, but  the  reader  who  has  this  moment  perused 
these  words  has  certainly  not  been  moved  to  laughter  by 
them  in  his  comfortable  arm-chair,  nor  has  his  enthusiasm 
been  so  kindled  as  to  make  him  stamp  about  the  room  or 
otherwise  provide  any  muscular  discharge  for  his  feelings. 
Here,  however,  from  the  "Times"  report,  is  the  effect  of 
these  same  words  upon  an  unusually  superior  audience, 
intellectually  far  above  the  level  of  an  ordinary  public 
meeting :  — 

"It  is  one  of  those  products  of  German  genius  which, 
whether  or  not  it  was  intended  exclusively  for  home 
consumption, —  (Laughter)  — has,  I  am  happy  to  say,  not 
found  a  market  abroad,  —  (Cheers)  —  and  certainly  not 
within  the  boundaries  of  the  British  Empire.  (Re- 
newed cheers.)  We  still  believe  here,  old-fashioned  people 
as  we  are,  —  (Laughter)  —  in  the  sanctity  of  treaties, 
—  (Cheers)  —  that  the  weak  have  rights,  and  that  the 
strong  have  duties,  and  small  nationalities  have  every 
bit  as  good  a  title  as  large  ones  to  life  and  independence, 
and  that  freedom  for  its  own  sake  is  as  well  worth  fight- 
ing for  to-day  as  it  ever  was  in  the  past  —  (Cheers) 
and  we  look  forward  at  the  end  of  this  war  to  a  Europe 
in  which  these  great  and  simple  and  venerable  truths 
will  be  recognised  and  safeguarded  for  ever  against  the 
recrudescence  of  the  era  of  blood  and  iron.  (Cheers.)" 
It  is  with  reluctance  that  I  dwell  upon  the  phenomena 
of  the  nature  of  the  crowd,  as  they  have  been  frequently 

29 


The   Crowd   in    Peace   and   War 

discussed  of  late  years,  especially  by  French  and  Italian 
writers,  but  all  my  readers  may  not  be  alike  familiar 
with    what    to    some    will    be    commonplace.     Amongst 
English  writers  Mr.  A.  B.  Walkley,  in  his  capacity  of 
theatrical  critic,  has  perhaps  described  the  crowd-nature 
most  plainly  as   manifested  by  theatre  audiences.     "A 
"crowd,"  he  said  in  his  evidence  before  the  Censorship 
Committee,  "is  a  new  entity,  differing  in  mind  and  will 
from  the  individuals  who  compose  it.     Its  intellectual 
pitch  is  lowered,  its  emotional  pitch  raised.     It  takes 
on  something    of    the  characteristics    of    a  hypnotized 
'subject.'     It  tends  to  be  irrational,  excitable,  lacking 
in   self-control.     Many    Frenchmen    under   the   Terror, 
gentle   and    humane   as   individuals,    made   up    crowds 
guilty    of    horrible  atrocities.      Questioned  afterwards, 
they  could  not  account  for  their  actions.     Some  inex- 
plicable  change   had   taken   place   in   them,   and   that 
inexplicable  something  was  the  influence  of  the  crowd. 
A  theatrical  audience  has  the  peculiar  psychology  of 
the  crowd.     An  offensive  play,  performed  before  it,  has 
an  entirely  different  effect  from  that  which  the  play 
would  have  if  read  separately  and  privately  by  each 
individual.     The  crowd  is  the  controlling  factor  in  the 
matter.     That,   I  submit,  is  the  real  justification  for 
retaining  a  Theatrical  Censorship!" 
On    another   occasion    (14th   Dec,    1903),    the   same 
writer  affirmed  that  all  persons  "belonging  to  a  crowd 
"descended  several  rungs  of  the  ladder  of  civilisation." 
Mobs,  as  we  know,  thus  descend.     So  do  other  forms  of 
crowd.     Here  is  what  a  correspondent  of  the  "Times" 
says  about  the  Russians:  — 

30 


The   Nature   of  Crowds 

"  I  suppose  it  may  seem  strange  that  a  kindly  man,  such 
"  as  I  have  pictured  the  Russian  soldier,  can  be  as  ferocious 
"  in  attack  as  he  certainly  is.  Indeed,  it  is  hard  to  reconcile 
"the  characteristics  of  gentleness  and  mildness  and  good 
"  humour  with  the  hideous  fury  into  which  men  work  them- 
"  selves  in  battle.  The  psychology  of  war  is  such,  however, 
"that  not  only  with  the  Russians,  but,  I  think,  with  all 
"  men  in  the  tumult  and  chaos  of  action,  the  characteristics 
"  of  the  individuals  are  merged  into  the  quite  foreign  per- 
sonality of  the  mass  itself.  Individuals  who  by  them- 
"  selves  are  the  mildest  of  men,  become  transformed  in 
"action  into  creatures  whose  oWn  individuality  is  utterly 
"  lost.  Once  the  action  is  over,  these  same  individuals  will 
"  minister  to  the  needs  and  agonies  of  their  prisoners  with 
"  as  much  gentleness  and  sympathy  as  to  men  of  their  own 
"race." 

Mr.  Moreton  Frewen's  observations  on  the  German 
crowd  indicate  that  it  descends,  as  common  opinion  now 
realises,  to  a  lower  level  than  that  of  any  other  civilised 
European  nation.  "The  more  we  read  German  history," 
he  says,  "the  more  we  discover  that  the  German  nature 
"aggregates  dangerously;  that  the  tendency  of  any 
"German  crowd  is  to  be  worse  than  its  units.  It  cannot 
"fairly  be  said  that  we  English  are  only  now  finding  this 
"out  at  a  time  when  instead  of  being  the  ally  of  Germany 
"we  are  her  enemy.  Look  at  what  the  Duke  of  Welling- 
"ton  wrote  to  his  mother  in  1807  (Maxwell's  'Life  of 
' ' Wellington ') :  'I  can  assure  you  that  from  the  General 
'"of  the  Germans  down  to  the  smallest  drummer  boy  in 
"their  legion  the  earth  never  groaned  under  such  a  set 
:"of    murdering,    infamous    villains.     They    murdered, 

31 


The   Crowd   in    Peace   and   War 

"'robbed  and  ill  treated  the  peasantry  wherever  they 
"'went.'" 

"The  late  General  Grierson,  who  commanded  our  troops 
"at  the  relief  of  the  foreign  embassies,  at  Pekin,  told  me 
"that  the  infamies  perpetrated  by  the  Germans  on  these 
"helpless  Chinese  were  such  that  he  could  never  again 
"break  bread  with  a  German.  The  soldiers  of  the 
"American  expeditionary  force  must  be  equally  aware 
"of  this." 

The  fundamental  reason  why  a  collective  body  of 
human  beings  differs  toto  ccclo  from  so  many  individuals  is 
because  no  two  individuals  can  ever  think  alike,  whilst 
any  number  can  feel  alike.  Quot  homines  tot  sententice 
is  proverbial  truth.  Witness  the  hopeless  struggles  of 
generations  of  churchmen  to  state  simple  dogmas  in 
plain  words  so  as  to  be  universally  acceptable,  and  the 
ultimate  necessity  to  which  they  were  driven  to  compel 
acceptance  of  formulae  by  force  and  to  wink  at  individual 
freedom  of  personal  interpretation  of  the  actual  words 
and  phrases.  But  no  such  difficulty  arises  in  connexion 
with  feelings  and  passions.  The  Germans  were  able  to 
unite  very  completely  in  hating  England,  without  need 
to  quarrel  about  definitions  of  terms.  Who  wants  a 
definition  of  love,  of  pride,  of  grief  or  joy?  We  can  all 
unite  without  the  smallest  difficulty  in  such  emotions,  and 
moreover  our  union  of  feeling  is  a  different  kind  of  union 
from  that  which  we  describe  as  intellectual  agreement. 
Union  of  feeling  promotes,  and  flourishes  in,  a  state  of 
/enthusiasm.  It  is  like  a  mesmeric  condition.  It  height- 
ens our  sense  of  life;  it  carries  us  beyond  the  limitations 

of   our  intelligence;    it  takes  us  into  another   world, — 

32 


The   Nature   of  Crowds 

higher  or  lower  as  the  case  may  be,  —  but  at  any  rate  other 
than  the  world  in  which  we  normally  exist. 

Hence  it  is  that  a  crowd  has  all  the  emotions  and  no 
intellect.  It  can  feel,  but  it  cannot  think.  It  has  m 
common  a  subtle  sensibility  to  feeling.  Passion  sweeps 
through  it,  but  it  can  reason  about  nothing;  for  it  has 
no  reasoning  apparatus  in  common.  The  nerves  of  all 
its  members  may  certainly  be  in  connection  with  one 
another,  but  not  their  thoughts.  They  can  applaud  or 
"boo"  in  common,  but  they  cannot  criticise  or  differen- 
tiate. Acceptance  or  rejection  are  their  only  alterna- 
tive; feeling  can  accomplish  those  operations  with 
hardly  any  help  from  reason. 

"You  can  talk  a  mob  into  anything,"  wrote  Ruskin 
('Sesame,'  p.  39),  "its  feelings  may  be  —  usually  are — on 
'the  whole  generous  and  right;  but  it  has  no  foundation 
'for  them,  no  hold  of  them;  you  may  tease  or  tickle  it 
'into  any,  at  your  pleasure;  it  thinks  by  infection  for 
'  the  most  part,  catching  an  opinion  like  a  cold,  and  there 
'is  nothing  so  little  that  it  will  not  roar  itself  wild  about, 
'when  the  fit  is  on;  —  nothing  so  great  but  it  will  forget 
'in  an  hour,  when  the  fit  is  past.  But  a  gentleman's 
'.  .  .  passions  are  just,  measured,  and  continuous." 

Ancient  writers  long  ago  realised  some  of  the  qualities 
of  the  great  public  crowd,  but  for  the  most  part  only  its 
evil  qualities.  Here  are  a  few  citations  which  might  be 
multiplied  almost  indefinitely:  — 

Herodotus  (iii  81)  :  wdeei  (6  817/1.05)  e/XTreaiov  ra  irptfyftaTa  avev 
vov,  -^ufxapptjo  TrorafJiV  ikcAos. 

Livy  (24.  25.  8).  "Hsec  est  natura  multitudinis;  aut 
"humiliter  servit  aut  superbe  dominatur." 

33 


The   Crowd   in    Peace   and   War 

Tacitus  (Ann.  i.  29):  "Nihil  in  vulgo  modicum;   terrere 
"ni  paveant;    ul>i  pertimuerunl  impune  contemni." 
Sir  Walter   Elaleigh:    "The   Multitude,   wanting  that 

"virtue  which  we  call  honesty  in  all  men,  and  that  <  - 
"peeial  gift  of  God  we  call  charity,  condemn  without 
"hearing,  wound  without  offence  given." 

Sir  Thomas  Roc,  on  the  Indian  public  in  Mogul  days: 
"The  multitude,  full  of  tumor  and  Noyce,  without  head 
"or  foote;  only  it  rages,  but  bendea  it  selfe  upon  noc  direct 
"end." 

Such  utterances  are  but  superficial.     All  crowds,  even 

those  most  suddenly  and  accidentally  formed,  possess  the 

potentiality  of  good  emotions  as  fully  as  of  bad,  and  it 

is  necessary  to  bear  this  continually  in  mind.     A  modern 

writer,   Monsieur  Tarde,  by  no  means  covers  the  whole 

ground  when  he  says:    "Si  di verses  qu'elles  soient  par 

'leur  origine,  comme  par  tous  leurs  autres  caracteres, 

'les  foules  se  ressemblent  toutes  par  certains  traits:   leur 

'intolerance    prodigieuse,    leur    orgueil    grotesque,    leur 

'susceptibililc   maladive,   le  sentiment   affolant  de  leur 

'  irresponsabilite  ne  de  Tillusion  de  la  toute-puissance,  et 

'la  perte  totale  du  sentiment  de  la  mesure  qui  tient  a 

Toutrance    de    leurs    emotions    mutuellement    exaltees. 

'Entre    l'execration    et    l'adoration,    entre    l'horreur    et 

'  Tenthousiasme,  entre  les  cris  vive  et  a  mort,  il  n'y  a  pas 

'de  milieu  pour  une  foule.     Vive,  cela  signifie  vive  a  ja- 

'mais.     II  y  a  la  un  souhait  d'immortalite  divine,  un  com- 

'  mencement  d'apotheose.     II  suffit  d'un  rien  pour  changer 

'la  divinisation  en  damnation." 

All  this  is  true,  but  also  it  is  no  less  true  that  crowds 
may  be  generous,   sympathetic,   full   of   admiration   for 

34 


The   Nature   of  Crowds 

anything  great  or  noble  that  they  can  feel,  and  of  all 
manner  of  other  admirable  emotional  exhibits.  Crowds 
are  neither  good  nor  evil  in  the  nature  of  things,  but  they 
may  become  either  the  one  or  the  other. 

What  a  crowd  can  descend  to  was  shown  over  and  over 
again  in  the  French  Revolution.  Their  enthusiasm  was 
even  at  the  service  of  a  Marat.  "L'apotheose  de  ce 
monstre,"  continues  the  same  writer,  "le  culte  rendu 
a  son  'cceur  sacre,'  expose  au  Pantheon,  est  un  eclatant 
specimen  de  la  puissance  de  mutuel  aveuglement,  de 
mutuelle  hallucination,  dont  les  hommes  rassembles 
sont  capables.  Dans  cet  entrainement  irresistible,  la 
lachete  a  eu  sa  part,  mais  bien  faible,  en  somme,  et  comme 
noyee  dans  la  sincerite  generale." 

If  the  virtues  of  a  crowd  arise  from  its  emotions,  their 
unmeasured  character  and  the  crowd's  vices  are  the 
result  of  a  lack  of  intelligence.  As  we  have  said,  a  crowd 
has  no  brain.  It  is  foolish,  therefore,  to  blame  crowds  for 
what  they  cannot  help.  The  late  Professor  S.  H.  Butcher 
wrote:  "A  democratic  society  is  inclined  to  do  its  thinking 
"by  deputy,  if  only  it  is  permitted  to  do  its  voting  indi- 
vidually. It  is  so  easy  to  think  in  herds  through  Com- 
"mittees  and  Sub-Committees  and  party  organisations. 
"To  exercise  the  thinking  power  for  its  own  sake  is  the 
"central  idea  of  Academic  studies.  Suppress  thinking 
"and  you  will  be  able  to  suppress  freedom  itself."  That 
is,  of  course,  perfectly  true,  but  it  is  in  the  nature  of 
things.  A  democratic  society  can  no  more  think  than  it 
can  go  and  study  at  a  University,  and  the  whole  busi- 
ness of  the  modern  world  is  to  find  out  how  best  to  do  its 

thinking  for  it. 

35 


The   Crowd  in    Peace   and  War 

A  crowd  is,  in  fact,  like  an  explosive.  It  can  easily  be 
fired,  and  the  result,  if  it  is  fired  casually,  is  likely  to  be 
highly  disastrous.  It  may  even  go  off,  as  mobs  do,  by 
spontaneous  ignition.  On  the  other  hand,  its  powers 
may  be  utilised  to  accomplish  great  ends,  and  have  been 
so  utilised  throughout  the  ages  in  which  civilisation  has 
been  slowly  growing.  For  crowds  are  the  nest  and  abid- 
ing place  of  ideals,  and  it  has  been  by  ideals  that  man 
has  been  raised  from  the  level  of  the  beast.  A  crowd 
lacks  reason,  but  possesses  faith.  The  ideals  of  a  St. 
Francis,  for  instance,  first  form  a  crowd  and  then  by  it 
regenerate  the  world.  In  the  succession  of  ideals  has 
been  the  life  of  the  human  soul,  and  he  who  shall  write 
the  history  of  that  succession,  as  no  one  has  yet  at- 
tempted to  write  it,  will  produce  the  story  of  the 
growth  of  humanity.  Once  an  ideal  has  become  incor- 
porated in  a  crowd,  it  must  stand  its  trial  in  the  great 
inquest  of  the  world.  If  it  be  a  right  and  noble  ideal, 
the  crowd  prospers  and  spreads,  engulfing  more  and  more 
individuals  and  inspiring  them,  and  through  them  the 
generations  that  are  to  follow.  If  it  be  a  vile  ideal, 
resistance  will  rise  up  against  it  and  the  crowd  that  is 
formed  upon  it  will  fail.  The  ideal  of  might  is  now 
upon  its  trial,  and  the  world  has  risen  up  against  it  and 
said  No!  to  it,  and  the  crowd  that  is  animated  by  it  has 
not  succeeded  yet. 

When  we  have  said  this  much  we  have  really  explained 
nothing;  we  have  but  stated  the  existence  of  certain 
phenomena  which  those  who  look  can  behold.  The  rela- 
tion of  man  to  man  is  still  a  dark  mystery  which  science  has 
scarcely  yet  attempted  to  lighten.     What  is  it  that  gives 

36 


The   Nature   of  Crowds 

to  some  by  birthright  the  capacity  of  dominating  others? 
Men  in  their  crowd-relations  are  "such  stuff  as  dreams 
"are  made  of."  The  drama,  says  Walkley,  is  a  kind  of 
hypnotic  agency,  "the  mental  state  of  a  theatrical  audi- 
"ence  resembling  that  of  a  man  in  a  dream,  half-way  be- 
"tween  complete  illusion  and  absolute  non-illusion." 
What  is  the  cause  of  this  hypnotic  condition?  We  talk 
vaguely  of  animal  magnetism,  without  knowing  that 
such  a  force  exists.  How  does  a  brain  send  a  message 
bidding  the  hand  to  close?  Is  the  brain  a  battery  and  is 
the  message  in  the  nature  of  a  telegram?  Does  man 
send  out  wireless  messages  without  knowing  it,  and  is 
there  some  unrecognised  coherer  in  the  make-up  of  other 
individuals  that  can  receive  them?  Every  one  of  us  has 
at  some  time,  the  most  phlegmatic  perhaps  only  in  their 
early  youth,  experienced  the  strange  emotion  of  being 
raised  out  of  his  normal  state  into  a  condition  of  enthu- 
siasm which  the  ancients  likened  to  intoxication,  where- 
fore they  cultivated  Dionysiac  Mysteries.  What  is  it 
that  happens  in  us  at  those  times?  Has  it  something  to 
do  with  our  subconscious  self,  if  indeed  there  be  such  a 
thing  as  a  subconscious  self  at  all?  This  is  a  vague 
region  into  which  Science  is  only  beginning  to  search  a 
way,  but  in  that  region,  vague  as  you  please  but  real 
none  the  less,  the  phenomena  of  the  crowd  are  produced. 
There  the  forces  exist  by  which  it  is  swayed;  there  the  dim 
consciousness  it  has  of  life;  and  it  is  there,  when  this 
unknown  land  shall  have  been  penetrated  by  an  explorer 
of  genius,  that  the  secrets  of  crowd-life  and  of  much  else 
that  we  long  to  understand  may  some  day  be  revealed. 
One  who,  like  the  present  writer,  treads  with  doubtful 

37 

134433    ' 


The   Crowd   in    Peace   and   War 

balance  on  such  giddy  aretes,  and  finds  his  own  way  dif- 
ficult enough  to  trace  in  the  high  regions  where  philoso- 
phers dwell,  will  be  wise  if  he  declines  to  act  as  guide  to 
others,  but  with  them  waits  for  a  leader  with  keener  sight 
and  steadier  foot  to  show  him  also  the  way. 


38 


CHAPTER  III 
CROWD-UNITS 

HAVING  briefly  dealt  with  the  crowd  as  a  whole, 
let  us  now  consider  the  condition  of  an  individual 
man  regarded  as  a  crowd-unit.  A  man  may  join 
a  crowd  for  all  sorts  of  reasons,  he  may  even  be  born  into 
membership  of  it,  but  he  only  becomes  an  integral  part 
of  it  by  "catching  its  enthusiasm."  The  fact  that  we 
normally  employ  the  word  "catch"  for  this  process  is 
significant.  A  man  likewise  catches  a  disease,  that  is 
to  say  the  infection  enters  him  unperceived.  Enthusi- 
asm is  infectious.  Reason  has  no  part  in  its  transfer 
from  one  to  another.  It  descends  as  it  were  like  a  flame 
from  heaven,  or  it  rises  as  an  exhalation  from  the  pit. 
No  one  knows  whence  it  cometh  or  whither  it  goeth. 
"So  is  every  one  that  is  born  of  the  spirit."  Every  crowd 
has  a  crowd-spirit  and  every  true  member  of  a  crowd 
catches  that  spirit.  To  go  into  a  crowd  is  like  going  into 
a  cholera- village;  the  man  who  does  so  puts  himself  in 
the  way  of  infection.  The  persistent  reader  of  a  given 
newspaper  runs  the  chance  of  presently  finding  himself 
one  of  its  crowd.  The  man  who  goes  to  a  revival  meet- 
ing may  find  himself  at  the  stool  of  repentance  before  he 
realises  that  he  has  actually  been  caught.  The  disease 
may  run  its  course  quickly  or  may  revolutionise  his  life; 
with  that  question  we  are  not  at  the  moment  concerned. 

39 


The   Crowd  in    Peace   and   War 

The  point  to  be  made  clear  is  that  absorption  into  a 
crowd  is  not  an  intellectual  but  an  emotional  process. 
A  band  passes  along  a  street  with  colours  flying  and  sol- 
diers marching  proudly  behind.  The  onlooker  is  tempted 
to  march  with  them,  falling  into  step.  He  almost  feels 
himself  one  of  them;  the  collective  spirit  touches  him. 
He  follows  on  to  barracks  and  enlists.  Or  he  meets  a 
friend  who  has  enlisted,  and  catches  the  spirit  from  him, 
or  reads  an  exhortation  in  his  newspaper.  Nine  times 
out  of  ten  enlistment  results  from  a  sudden  emotion. 
The  man  whose  reason  drives  him  to  enlist  against  his 
will  is  a  rare  and  high  exception.  It  is  the  will  itself 
that  generally  suffers  change  under  the  influence  of  crowd- 
emotion. 

"  In  the  East,"  writes  Kinglake  in  "  Ebthen,"  "you  might 
as  well  dispute  the  efficacy  of  grass  or  grain  as  of  magic. 
There  is  no  controversy  about  the  matter.  The  effect 
of  this,  the  unanimous  belief  of  an  ignorant  people,  upon 
the  mind  of  a  stranger  is  extremely  curious  and  well 
worth  noticing.  A  man  coming  freshly  from  Europe 
is  at  first  proof  against  the  nonsense  with  which  he  is 
assailed,  but  often  it  happens  that  after  a  little  while 
the  social  atmosphere  in  which  he  lives  will  begin  to 
infect  him, '  and  if  he  has  been  unaccustomed  to  the 
cunning  of  fence  by  which  Reason  prepares  the  means 
of  guarding  herself  against  Fallacy,  he  will  yield  himself 
at  last  to  the  faith  of  those  around  him,  and  this  he  will 
do  by  sympathy,  it  would  seem,  rather  than  conviction. 
I  have  been  much  interested  in  observing  that  the 
mere  'practical  man,'  however  skilful  and  shrewd  in 
his  own  way,  has  not  the  kind  of  power  that  will  enable 

40 


Crowd-Units 

"him  to  resist  the  gradual  impression  made  upon  his  mind 
"  by  the  common  opinion  of  those  whom  he  sees  and  hears 
"from  day  to  day." 

Let  me,  in  this  connexion,  also  quote  a  sentence  to 
similar  effect  from  one  of  Newman's  essays:  "Public 
"opinion  especially  acts  upon  the  imagination;  it  does 
"not  convince  but  it  impresses;  it  has  the  force  of  au- 
thority rather  than  of  reason;  and  concurrence  in  it  is, 
"not  an  intelligent  decision,  but  a  submission  or  belief." 

"A  Neutral  Correspondent"  writing  in  the  London 
"Times"  of  May  27th  1915  describes  how  the  German 
people  were  carefully  and  intentionally  hypnotized  by 
their  Government.  This  is  perhaps  the  greatest  achieve- 
ment in  that  kind  that  has  ever  been  accomplished  in 
recorded  history.  I  have  received  permission  to  quote 
at  length  from  this  very  remarkable  communication. 
When  the  writer  entered  Germany  he  believed  himself 
able  to  take  a  detached  view  of  the  war,  and  that  he 
was  "proof  against  'atmosphere.'"  He  presently  found 
that  he  was  mistaken,  and  that  his  mind  was  being  in- 
fluenced by  the  peculiar  mood  of  the  public  into  which 
he  was  plunged. 

"The  chief  agency  in  the  creation  of  this  state  of  mind, 

"apart  from  the  direct  influence  of  the  thorough  military 

"organisation  of  the  State,  is  the  shrewd  management  of 

"the  Press.     It  will  be  remembered  that,  on  the  outbreak 

"of  war,  the  whole  German  Press  was  turned  against 

"England   overnight.     Twenty-four   hours   after   having 

"praised  the  vigorous  efforts  of  Great  Britain  to  prevent 

"war,  it  denounced  Sir  Edward  Grey  as  the  moving  spirit 

"in  a  conspiracy  to  assail  Germany.     None  but  distorted 

41 


The   Crowd  in    Peace   and   War 

"views  from  abroad  were  allowed  to  be  published.  The 
"German  people  were  told  only  what  it  was  desired  they 
"should  believe.  All  unfavourable  information  was 
"treated  as  'lies,'  and  a  thoroughly-organised  Press 
"campaign  was  carried  on  in  neutral  countries  in  the 
"same  sense.  The  'neutral'  opinions  thus  inspired  were 
"reproduced  in  Germany  as  evidence  that  impartial  foreign 
"opinion  supported  the  German  view. 

"By  these  means  the  war-mind  of  the  German  people 
"was  created  and  fashioned.  The  process  still  goes  on, 
"though,  as  I  have  before  remarked,  the  French,  Russian 
"and  British  communiques  are  now  regularly  printed  in 
"the  larger  newspapers,  and  are  frequently  criticised  in 
"the  communications  from  the  German  Headquarters 
"Staff.  But  foreign  reports  have  no  influence  whatever 
"upon  the  German  mind.  The  Germans  are  so  convinced 
"of  the  accuracy  of  their  own  official  versions  that  no  other 
"reports  count. 

"It  is  the  same  with  enemy  newspapers.  In  the  Vic- 
"toria  Cafe  at  Berlin  I  was  able  to  read,  day  by  day,  the 
"French,  Italian,  German,  and  neutral  journals.  They 
"were  also  to  be  bought  in  the  newspaper  kiosks  of  the 
"large  towns.  No  remarks  were  made  when  I  asked  for 
"them;  but  I  noticed  a  pitying  smile  on  German  faces 
"whenever  they  saw  others  read  them. 

"It  is  not  the  big  papers  of  international  repute  that 
"exercise  the  greatest  influence  in  Germany.  In  the 
"smaller  towns  and  agricultural  districts  it  is  the  local 
"Press  that  counts.  In  that  Press  none  but  German 
"reports  are  to  be  found,  with  German  explanations  and 
"German  accusations  against  enemy  countries.     No  at- 

42 


Crowd-Units 

tack  upon  the  enemy  is  too  gross  for  this  Press  to  repro- 
duce, and  nothing  in  Germany's  favour  is  too  absurd 
for  its  readers  to  swallow.  Not  only  is  the  victorious 
progress  of  the  German,  Austrian,  and  Turkish  armies 
constantly  celebrated,  but  the  financial,  industrial,  and 
social  conditions  in  Germany  are  declared  to  be  far 
superior  to  those  existing  elsewhere.  Dissensions  be- 
tween the  Powers  of  the  Entente  are  reported,  and  dis- 
turbances among  their  peoples  are  invented  and  dwelt 
upon. 

"Every  scrap  of  news  that  can  be  turned  to  account 
in  this  direction  is  magnified,  distorted,  and  supplied 
from  central  agencies  to  thousands  of  local  papers. 
Leading  articles  are  supplied  in  the  same  way.  More- 
over, the  German  Headquarters'  report  is  posted  up 
every  day  at  4  p.  m.  outside  every  telegraph  office,  and 
is  circulated  in  special  editions  of  the  local  papers,  which 
contain  nothing  but  this  report.  This  local  Press  exer- 
cises a  kind  of  hypnotic  influence  upon  the  people  at 
large.  As  I  spent  most  of  my  time  in  Germany  in  the 
smaller  towns  and  rural  districts,  I  came  under  its  spell. 
Everybody  had  a  ready  explanation  in  answer  to  inquiry 
about  the  failure  to  reach  Paris  or  Calais.  When  I 
asked  about  the  news  of  revolutions  in  India  and  Egypt, 
and  of  Turkish  victories  on  the  Suez  Canal,  I  was  assured 
that  they  were  perfectly  true.  The  British  denials  were 
treated  as  'the  usual  English  lies.'  And  it  was  argued 
as  the  strongest  evidence  of  the  unreliability  of  English 
reports  that  naval  losses  which  neutrals  had  witnessed 
had  been  kept  secret  by  the  British  Admiralty. 

"The  cumulative  effect  upon  me  of  this  constant  sug- 

43 


The   Crowd  in    Peace   and   War 

"gestion,  with  its  well-calculated  variations  in  the  films 
"of  the  cinemas  and  in  the  periodical  literature,  was  such 
"that  I  seemed  gradually  to  lose  my  individuality  and  to 
"become  merged  in  the  German  mass.  If  it  was  not 
"possible  for  me  to  react  against  it,  what  chance  has  a 
"German,  no  matter  how  sceptically  disposed,  of  acquir- 
ing a  true  perspective?  It  was  with  a  sense  of  relief, 
"as  of  the  passing  of  a  nightmare,  that  I  crossed  the  bor- 
"der,  and  found  a  freer  atmosphere  and  neutral  associa- 
tions in  Switzerland." 

This  infectiousness  of  crowd-emotion  is  specially  mani- 
fested in  public,  and  particularly  in  political  meetings. 
The  ordinary  large  political  meeting  seldom  consists 
wholly  or  even  mainly  of  convinced  members  of  one 
party.  Usually  the  audience  is  of  a  mixed  political  com- 
plexion, with  one  party  in  a  majority  in  the  room  and  in 
complete  possession  of  the  platform.  At  the  beginning 
of  the  meeting  opponents  may  make  objections  and 
interruptions,  but  this  phase  can  generally  be  relied 
on  to  pass.  Once  enthusiasm  has  been  kindled  all  are 
carried  away  by  it,  and  even  convinced  opponents  may 
be  seen  in  the  excitement  of  the  moment  applauding 
speakers  and  sentiments  which  in  the  quiet  of  their  own 
homes  they  hold  in  horror.  With  the  close  of  the  meet- 
ing the  mood  may  pass,  but  often  it  happens  that  a 
permanent  change  in  a  man's  sentiments  is  thus  effected, 
and  that  is  why  political  managers  regard  public  meet- 
ings as  of  importance.  They  know  well  enough  that 
the  enthusiasm  of  a  meeting  means  very  little  as  an  index 
of  the  opinions  of  a  community,  but  they  likewise  know 

that  it  is  a  powerful  force  in  affecting  individuals,  and 

44 


V. 


Crowd-Units 

experience  has  taught  them  that  it  is  often  far  from 
transient.  Thus  says  Plato  (Ep.  vii.  341),  "In  social 
"intercourse,  a  light  may  be  suddenly  kindled  in  the 
"mind,  which  when  once  generated,  may  keep  itself 
"alive." 
y  Few,  if  any,  mature  men  and  women  realise  how  many 
of  their  opinions  which  they  firmly  hold  and  by  which 
they  shape  their  lives,  have  been  "caught"  rather  than  con- 
sciously and  intentionally  adopted  by  reasoning  process. 
Indeed,  I  believe  it  safe  to  assert  that  the  ordinary  man's 
opinions  have  been  "caught"  at  one  time  or  another  and 
that  his  individual  reason  conducted  him  to  few  of  them. 
Take,  for  example,  the  life  of  an  ordinary  professional 
man.  In  infancy  and  early  childhood  his  parents  and 
nurses  from  the  very  beginning,  by  continual  command  and 
correction,  impress  the  crowd-idea  upon  the  shaping  mind. 
"It  is  not  proper  to  do  this:  it  is  vulgar  to  do  that.  Such 
"an  action  is  bad  manners,  such  another  is  wrong.  Take 
"your  hands  out  of  your  pockets.  Don't  bite  your  nails. 
"See  how  nicely  behaved  little  Tommy  is.  What  would 
"his  mother  think  of  you  if  she  saw  you  do  so  and  so? 
"No  one  will  think  you  come  of  decent  people  if  you  behave 
"thus."  Day  after  day  and  hour  after  hour  what  people 
would  think  of  him  is  hammered  into  the  child,  whilst  the 
settled  public  opinion  in  the  form  of  morals  is  imposed 
upon  him  as  having  divine  sanction.  Thus,  not  merely 
his  conscience,  of  which  there  is  much  more  to  be  said,  but 
his  manners  and  the  whole  of  his  nascent  ideas  of  conduct, 
of  right  and  wrong,  of  dress  and  behaviour  —  everything 
is  imposed  upon  him  as  a  crowd-precept  backed  by  more 
or  less  of  a  religious  sanction.   J 

45        > 


The   Crowd   in    Peace   and   War 

A  remarkable  example  of  the  effect  of  such  training 
came  in  my  way  recently.  A  boy  was  employed  in  a  pic- 
ture dealer's  shop,  where  he  gave  great  satisfaction  alike 
to  his  master  and  the  customers  by  his  agreeable  manners 
and  obliging  disposition.  He  was  evidently  a  "well 
"brought  up  boy."  His  master  one  summer  Saturday, 
when  the  weather  seemed  set  fair,  said  to  him:  "You'll 
"have  a  fine  day  to-morrow.  What  do  you  do  on  Sun- 
"days?  Do  you  ever  get  a  game  of  cricket?"  "Oh!  no, 
"sir,"  he  replied,  "not  on  Sundays!"  The  master  was  sur- 
prised at  the  boy's  tone  because  he  knew  that  his  father 
"and  all  his  family  were  pronounced  agnostics  and  prob- 
"ably  called  themselves  infidels.  So  he  asked:  "Why  not 
"on  Sundays?"  The  boy  answered  rather  indignantly: 
"We  have  been  better  brought  up  than  that.  It's  not 
"respectable  to  play  public  games  on  Sundays.  I  should 
"be  ashamed  to  do  a  thing  like  that."  It  was  not  that  he 
thought  it  in  any  way  wrong  to  play  cricket  on  Sunday. 
There  was  no  religious  prejudice  against  it  in  his  family. 
It  was  bad  form.  It  was  contrary  to  the  crowd-stand- 
ards of  the  folk  among  whom  his  people  lived.  "It  was 
"worse  than  wicked;  it  was  vulgar,"  as  the  child  said  in 
"Punch." 

If  home  training  be  thus  effective  in  imposing  general 
crowd-notions  on  a  child,  what  shall  we  say  of  school- 
training  and  especially,  for  our  present  purpose,  of  the 
training  of  an  English  public  school?  The  normal  English 
schoolboy  often  reacts  against  what  masters  inculcate  and 
is  liable  to  adopt  in  his  heart  of  hearts,  and  later  in  life  to 
put  in  operation,   exactly    contrary  principles  to  those 

inculcated  by  school  authorities.     It  is  from  his  fellow- 

46 


Crowd-Units 

boys  that  he  really  learns  the  conduct  of  life,  and  is  made 
to  feel  the  difference  between  what  is  "good  form"  and 
what  is  not.  His  discomfort  as  a  new  boy  is  due  to  the 
fact  that  he  is  a  misfit,  a  round  peg  in  a  square  hole,  an 
individual  who  has  not  yet  become  a  crowd-unit.  He  has 
to  learn  the  school  standards,  to  know  what  his  fellows 
consider  good  behaviour  and  what  disgraceful.  A  num- 
ber of  trifling  external  details  are  insisted  on,  but  they  are 
mere  signs  and  emblems  of  public  opinion  —  to  close  or 
not  to  close  all  the  buttons  of  his  waistcoat,  to  wear  or  not 
to  wear  a  hat  at  a  particular  time  of  day,  to  walk  or  not 
down  the  middle  or  along  some  special  side  of  a  street  — 
these  are  mere  outward  signs,  conformity  to  which  marks  a 
general  conformity  to  the  unwritten  school  code.  Through- 
out the  whole  of  a  public  schoolboy's  life  in  any  big  school 
he  is  in  the  grip  of  the  school-crowd's  standard,  conform- 
ably with  which  in  conduct,  in  speech,  and  consequently 
almost  of  necessity  in  spirit,  his  notions  come  to  be  fash- 
ioned. The  shaping  thus  accomplished  leaves  its  impress 
on  the  boy  for  life. 

The  Universities,  or  at  all  events  the  old  English 
Universities  of  Oxford  and  Cambridge,  of  which  alone  I 
can  speak  with  any  assurance,  produce  a  like  effect  upon 
undergraduates;  and  special  colleges  have  a  particular 
tone  and  spirit  of  their  own.  After  subjection  to  the 
impress  of  the  University  crowd  for  three  or  four  years, 
almost  every  man  takes  the  print  of  it  indelibly  upon  his 
personality.  He  receives  and  thenceforward  accepts  and 
tries  to  act  up  to  certain  standards;  he  also  adopts  a  group 
of  prejudices.  Standards  and  prejudices  are  alike  quali- 
ties caught  from  the  University  crowd  and  not  imposed 

47 


The   Crowd  in    Peace   and   War 

by  any  superior  authority.  Here  again  there  are  numbers 
of  trifling  observances  to  be  followed,  unimportant  in 
themselves  but  indicative  of  crowd-conformity.  Thus 
in  my  time  an  undergraduate  in  cap  and  gown  did  not 
carry  an  umbrella  no  matter  how  heavily  rain  might  be 
falling.  He  cut  the  tassel  of  his  cap  short,  and  there  were 
many  other  trifling  proprieties  which  I  forget.  If  these 
details  had  been  imposed  by  University  authorities  they 
would  have  been  evaded.  They  were  imposed  by  the 
undergraduate  crowd's  collective  opinion,  and  no  one 
dreamed  of  not  conforming.  What  was  true  of  such 
trifles  was,  of  course,  equally  true  of  important  matters 
of  conduct  and  manners.  Conformity  becomes  habit  and 
effects  a  correspondent  shaping  of  the  mind  which  after 
life  does  not  avail  to  destroy. 

Society  again  is  one  of  the  strongest  agencies  for  fash- 
ioning the  manners  and  setting  the  standards  of  mature 
life,  whilst  it  should  be  remembered  that  the  school  and 
college  tones  have  the  standards  of  society  ahead  of  them 
with  which  it  is  always  their  aim  to  be  in  harmony.     The 
clear-sighted  John  Henry  Newman  wrote  upon  this  matter : 
'  All  that  goes  to  constitute  a  gentleman  —  the  carriage, 
'gait,   address,  gestures,  voice;    the  ease,  the  self-pos- 
'  session,  the  courtesy,  the  power  of  conversing,  the  suc- 
'cess  in  not  offending;    the  lofty  principle,  the  delicacy 
'of  thought,  the  happiness  of  expression,  the  taste  and 
'propriety,  the  generosity  and  forbearance,  the  candour 
'  and  consideration,  the  openness  of  hand  —  these  quali- 
fies .  .  .  are  they  not  necessarily  acquired  where  they 
'are  to  be  found,  in  high  society?'     Here  is  no  quack 

rubbish  about  "nature's  gentleman."     Newman  knew  the 

48 


Crowd-Units 

world  too  well.  Society  is  the  creation  of  art,  and  a 
gentleman  (whether  he  be  a  good  man  or  no)  is  one  who 
has  acquired  the  Art  of  Living  —  who  is  an  artist  in  the 
handling  of  the  raw  material  of  life.  Rarely  indeed  an 
individual  may  be  born  in  a  low  rank  of  life  with  a  natu- 
rally faultless  taste.  Only  such  an  one  might  be  de- 
scribed as  a  "nature's  gentleman,"  but  that  is  not  what 
the  phrase  is  used  to  mean.  In  common  use  it  means  an 
honest  fellow;  but  in  truth  a  man  may  be  a  dishonest 
blackguard  and  yet  a  "gentleman." 
V  There  are  countless  other  crowds  to  which  a  man  belongs 
more  or  less  completely  as  he  passes  through  life,  and 
each  of  them  leaves  its  impression  upon  him.  S/Here  is 
what  Mr.  Asquith  said  the  other  day  in  reference  to  the 
late  Mr.  Percy  Illingworth :  — 

"No  man  had  imbibed  and  assimilated  with  more  zest 
"and  sympathy  that  strange,  indefinable,  almost  impal- 
"pable  atmosphere,  compounded  of  traditions  and  of 
"modern  influences,  which  preserves,  as  we  all  of  us  think, 
"the  unique  but  indestructible  personality  of  the  most 
"ancient  of  the  deliberative  assemblies  of  the  world." 

The  House  of  Commons  is  the  most  conspicuous  group 
of  associated  men  in  these  islands.  It  does  not  differ  in 
kind  from  any  other  assemblage  that  might  have  a  like 
continuity,  any  more  than  the  Cabinet  differs  in  kind 
from  any  other  Committee  or  board  that  has  business  to 
attend  to.  Every  body,  every  community,  every  group 
and  association  of  men  puts  its  impress  more  or  less  strongly 
upon  the  individuals  composing  it,  and  each  one  of  them, 
in  proportion  to  his  impressionability,  carries  away  from 
it  and  adopts  as  part  of  the  fabric  of  what  he  calls  his 

49 


The   Crowd   in    Peace   and   War 

opinions  the  opinions  proper  to  these  crowds  and  derived 
by  him  from  them. 

Finally,  it  is  in  this  way  that  public  opinion  constantly 

acts  upon  the  individual  and  more  often  than  not  sweeps 

him  along  with  it.     Public  opinion  is  a  powerful  and 

sometimes  a  valuable  force,  though  it  is  easy  to  contemn 

it  from  superior  points  of  view.     "Thus,"  said  Bismarck, 

'when  great  numbers  of   common  people  live  close  to- 

'gether,  individualities  naturally  fade  out  and  melt  into 

'each  other.     All  sorts  of  opinions  grow  out  of  the  air 

'from  hearsays  and  talk  behind  people's  backs;   opinions 

'  with  little  or  no  foundation  in  fact,  but  which  get  spread 

'  abroad  through  newspapers,  popular  meetings,  and  talk, 

'get  themselves  established  and  are  ineradicable.     People 

'talk  themselves  into  believing  the  thing  that  is  not; 

'  consider  it  a  duty  and  obligation  to  adhere  to  their  belief, 

'and  excite  themselves  about  prejudices  and  absurdities." 

To  rail  in  this  way  against  public  opinion  is  a  temptation 

to  which  all  are  liable  to  yield  at  times.     But  it  is  futile. 

We  have  it  and  shall  always  have  it  with  us,  and  it  is  as 

useless  to  rail  against  it  as  it  is  foolish  to  be  carried  away 

by  it. 

A  commonplace  public  man  —  I  suppress  his  name  — 
says  that:  "Public  opinion  is  generated  in  the  homes  of 
"the  British  people."  Nothing  could  be  more  untrue. 
It  is  generated  everywhere  except  in  the  home.  It  arises 
where  people  meet  and  is  propagated  by  the  newspapers. 
People  catch  it  just  as  the  schoolboy  catches  the  opinion 
of  his  school  and  the  Members  of  Parliament  the  standards 
of  the  House  of  Commons.  So  London  changes  the 
countryman  that  settles  within  her;   so  Paris  remakes  the 

50 


Crowd-Units 

Frenchman;  and  New  York,  I  suppose,  the  American. 
So  the  lawyer  and  the  physician  are  moulded  according  to 
professional  standards,  and  so  the  soldier  takes  on  the 
esprit  de  corps  of  his  regiment  and  the  army.  A  well- 
known  writer  used  the  following  phrase:  "The  20th,  a 
regiment  of  historic  renown,  is  famous  for  imparting  its 
aggregate  quality  to  the  individual  soldier."  All  regi- 
ments do  so,  but  not  all  inherit  equally  high  standards. 

Thus  also  a  nation  acts  upon  its  citizens  with  a  pressure 
that  begins  in  their  childhood  and  never  ceases.  "You 
English,"  foreigners  say  to  us,  "when  you've  said  a  thing 
"  'isn't  English,'  fancy  you've  settled  it, "  —  and  as  a 
matter  of  fact  we  have,  so  far  as  our  own  ideas  and  con- 
duct are  concerned.  But  the  commonplace  bigoted  crowd- 
unit,  who  thinks  nothing  of  any  other  crowd,  naturally 
holds  that  the  opinions  and  standards  of  his  own  society 
should  be  those  of  the  whole  world;  when  he  says  of  a 
thing  that  "it  isn't  English,"  he  means  that  it  is  bad  form 
everywhere  and  for  everybody,  and  that  attitude  foreign 
critics  naturally  resent.  Some  of  us  doubtless  know 
better,  but  how  few  they  are  compared  with  the  mass, 
whose  only  views  are  those  they  have  absorbed  from  the 
national  and  smaller  crowds  to  which  they  belong  or 
have  belonged. 

An  Englishman  and  a  Frenchman,  when  they  come  to- 
gether, say  on  a  high  mountain  side,  in  circumstances 
unusual  in  the  daily  life  of  either,  find  one  another  much 
of  a  sort  and  easily  enough  comprehensible.  But  in  their 
normal  lives  they  are  divided  by  the  fact  that,  as  back- 
ground of  all  they  do  and  experience,  they  have  each  his 
own  national  crowd.     The  Englishman  in  every  act  pos- 

51 


The   Crowd  in    Peace   and   War 

tulates  an  English  background  and  group  of  sanctions, 
the  Frenchman  a  French.  They  are  like  actors  upon 
different  stages,  surrounded  by  different  scenery,  and 
acting  before  different  audiences.  It  is  thus  that  mis- 
understandings so  easily  arise  between  persons  of  different 
nationalities,  and  the  moment  the  misunderstanding  does 
arise,  the  national  divergency  leaps  into  prominence  and 
they  begin  to  dislike  one  another,  and  the  Englishman 
goes  away  saying  he  dislikes  the  French  and  the  French- 
man the  English. 

It  is  an  entertaining  if  somewhat  saddening  occupation 
to  sit  where  people  congregate  for  talk  and  to  listen  for  the 
expression  of  a  really  independent  original  personal  opin- 
ion, or  an  idea  expressed  in  original  terms.  Language 
itself  has  taken  form  in  the  mouth  of  crowds;  as  for  the 
words  themselves,  the  crowd  determines  their  meaning. 
Whole  phrases  and  sentences  become  fixed  in  form  by 
having  been  shaped  to  express  collective  ideas.  Con- 
vention governs  the  thoughts,  the  beliefs,  and  the  speech 
of  most.  Few  indeed  are  those  who  habitually  test  opin- 
ions in  their  own  minds  before  acceptance  and  reutterance. 
Fashion  in  clothes  is  nothing  but  the  outward  and  visible 
expression  of  the  normal  individual's  general  conformity 
in  all  things  to  the  crowd  of  which  he  or  she  forms  an 
item. 

How  few  people  we  meet  who  are  even  partially  inde- 
pendent individuals !  Almost  all  talk  the  same  com- 
monplaces, utter  a  common  group  of  opinions,  and  resent 
disagreement  with  them.  Intolerance  is  proof  that  they 
are  mere  crowd-voices,  because  all  crowds  are  necessarily 
intolerant.     Notwithstanding  this  apparent  uniformity,  it 

52 


Crowd-Units 

is  certain  that  no  two  individuals  are  alike  in  structure  of 
mind  and  character.  If  they  would  think  for  themselves 
they  would  have  to  express  infinite  divergency  of  view. 
But  they  do  not  think.  They  adopt  opinions  like  ready- 
made  clothes  or  mere  fashions  acquired  from  the  pattern- 
maker. 

Here  is  what  an  American  writer,  Mr.  G.  S.  Lee,  has 
to  say  on  this  matter:  — 

"What  this  means  with  regard  to  the  typical  modern 
"man  is,  not  that  he  does  not  think,  but  that  it  takes  ten 
"thousand  men  to  make  him  think.  He  has  a  crowd- 
"soul,  a  crowd-creed.  Charged  with  convictions,  gal- 
"vanized  from  one  convention  to  another,  he  contrives 
"to  live,  and  with  a  sense  of  multitude  applause  and 
"cheers  he  warms  his  thoughts.  When  they  have  been 
"warmed  enough,  he  exhorts,  dictates,  goes  hither  and 
"thither  on  the  crutch  of  the  crowd,  and  places  his  crutch 
"on  the  world,  and  pries  on  it,  if  perchance  it  may  be 
"stirred  to  something.  To  the  bigotry  of  the  man  who 
"knows  because  he  speaks  for  himself  has  been  added  a 
"new  bigotry  on  the  earth, —  the  bigotry  of  the  man  who 
"speaks  for  the  nation;  who,  with  a  more  colossal  preju- 
dice than  he  had  before,  returns  from  a  mass  meeting 
"of  himself,  and,  with  the  effrontery  that  only  a  crowd 
"can  give,  backs  his  opinions  with  forty  States,  and  walks 
"  the  streets  of  his  native  town  in  the  uniform  of  all  human- 
"ity.  This  is  a  kind  of  fool  that  has  never  been  possible 
"until  these  latter  days.  Only  a  very  great  many  people, 
"all  of  them  working  on  him  at  once,  and  all  of  them 
"  watching  every  one  else  working  at  once,  can  produce 
"this  kind." 

53 


The   Crowd   in    Peace  and  War 

It  seems  at  first  sight  a  regrettable  fact  that  things 
should  be  so  in  our  modern  world.  But  they  are  so,  and 
so  they  must  remain  as  long  as  the  present  conditions  of 
rapid  intercommunication  and  promiscuous  publicity, 
controlled  by  newspapers  and  often  manipulated  for  their 
own  ends,  continue  and  even  further  develop.  We  have 
arrived  at  a  time  when  we  can  even  speak  of  the  public 
opinion  of  the  world.  It  is  still  young  and  feeble,  but  it 
will  be  stronger  presently.  We  have  seen  it  arise  against 
Germany  in  the  current  war,  and  some  Germans  have 
felt  the  force  of  it.  Some  day  it  will  be  a  much  stronger 
force  and  will  produce  results  that  we  cannot  foresee.  Will 
that  be  an  evil  development  for  humanity?     Surely  not. 

If  public  opinion  can  have  an  evil  effect  upon  a  narrow- 
minded  individual,  it  is  not  a  necessity  of  the  circum- 
stances of  human  life  that  crowds  should  atrophy  their 
units.  The  wise  man  refuses  to  part  with  his  individuality 
to  any  crowd  whatever.  He  may  belong  to  many,  he  will 
yield  himself  to  none.  To  some,  as  to  a  nation,  he  will  be- 
long all  his  days;  to  some,  as  a  school  or  college,  he  will 
entirely  belong  but  only  for  a  limited  period  of  his  life; 
to  some,  such  as  societies,  meetings,  and  so  forth,  he  will 
belong  intermittently.  To  some  he  will  render  up  more 
of  himself  than  to  others.  In  time  of  war  he  must  yield 
himself  wholly  to  his  country.  Herein,  however,  the  wise 
man  differs  from  the  fool.  The  fool  gives  himself  wholly 
to  each  and  every  crowd  that  successively  attracts  him. 
In  consequence  he  becomes  an  aggregate  of  inconsisten- 
cies. But  inconsistency,  as  Mr.  G.  L.  Calderon  says, 
"weighs  for  nothing  with  enthusiasts.     The  faculty  of 

"believing  contrary  things  at  the  same  time,  of  believing 

54 


Crowd-Units 

"that  which  they  cannot  understand,  or  that  which  they 
"know  to  be  false,  is  the  most  characteristic  feature  of 
"that  large  and  growing  class.  Yet  their  opinion  is  by 
"no  means  to  be  neglected;  for  they  are  the  makers  of 
"reputations;  they  are  the  light  kindling-stuff  which  sets 
"the  soldier  world  on  fire." 

I  cannot  better  conclude  this  chapter  than  with  a  pas- 
sage from  a  Commencement  address  by  Mr.  George  E. 
Vincent,  President  of  the  University  of  Wisconsin :  — 
"Modern  students  of  human  nature  have  changed  the 
old  saying,  'Many  men,  many  minds,'  into  the  new  dic- 
tum, 'One  man,  many  selves.'  There  is  much  talk  of 
multiple  personality.  Our  complex  modern  life  reflects 
itself  in  a  composite  person.  A  man  is  said  to  have  as 
many  selves  as  there  are  social  groups  of  which  he  feels 
himself  a  member.  To  maintain  a  business  self  which 
can  look  a  moral  self  straight  in  the  eye,  to  have  a  theo- 
logical self  on  good  terms  with  a  scientific  self,  to  keep 
the  peace  between  a  party  self  and  a  patriotic  self,  to 
preserve  in  right  relations  a  church  self  and  a  club  self  — 
such  are  the  present  problems  of  many  a  man  or  woman. 
One  way  to  escape  embarrassment  is  to  invite  at  a  given 
time  only  congenial  and  harmonious  selves,  and  to  ban- 
ish from  the  company  the  selves  that  are  discordant  and 
disconcerting.  The  strong  soul  is  he  who  can  summon 
all  his  selves  into  loyal  team  play.  Personality  is  the 
name  men  give  to  this  unity  of  the  self,  and  purpose  is 
the  organising  principle.  Only,  as  many  groups  of 
thought  and  feeling  are  schooled  into  co-operation  by  a 
well-considered  steadfast  aim,  can  a  man  be  master  of  a 

single  self.     To  be  sure,  unity  of  a  sort  can  be  achieved 

55 


The   Crowd   in    Peace   and   War 

by  one  who  has  a  meagre  company  of  selves.  Narrow- 
ness, provincialism,  bigotry,  describe  a  personality  in 
which  unity  of  purpose  is  won  at  the  sacrifice  of  breadth, 
outlook,  and  sympathy.  The  highest  type  of  person- 
ality grows  out  of  many  far-reaching  selves  which  have 
been  selected  and  organised  into  unity  by  a  dominant 
purpose.  It  is  no  easy  task  to  unify  often  divergent 
and  conflicting  impulses,  habits,  memories  and  ideals 
into  a  harmonious  hierarchy  of  aims.  But  such  single- 
ness of  ideal  and  effort  creates  power.  The  ideal  per- 
sonality includes  many  selves  organised  by  a  masterful 
purpose  and  unified  by  a  spirit  of  harmony." 


56 


CHAPTER  IV 
CROWD-CONTINUITY 

IF  a  main  function  of  the  Crowd  be  to  incorporate  and 
give  currency  and  effect  to  ideals,  it  possesses  a  scarcely 
less  valuable  quality  in  that  it  is  the  depository  of  what 
we  call  Tradition.  Tradition  is  Crowd-Memory.  I  do 
not  here  refer  to  traditions  concerning  facts,  such  for 
instance  as  that  which  any  villager  in  my  neighbourhood 
will  relate  about  a  certain  disused  quarry  by  Medway- 
side,  whence  he  will  tell  you  —  and  probably  with  truth  — 
that  the  stone  was  hewn  for  the  Tower  of  London.  Such 
traditions  of  fact  are  as  often  false  as  true,  are  almost 
always  inaccurate,  and  cannot  be  believed  without  other 
confirmation.  It  is  only  when  events  have  been  clothed 
in  poetic  form  and  are  become  legends  that  a  crowd  carries 
them  down  through  successive  generations,  and  then  it 
is  the  spirit  and  emotion,  produced  by  the  event  on  the 
folk,  which  thus  survives.  Written  record  is  as  much 
superior  to  tradition  for  preservation  of  facts  as  an  edu- 
cated individual  is  to  a  parish  meeting  as  a  reporter  of 
them,  record  being  a  function  not  of  emotion  but  of  intel- 
ligence, which  no  crowd  can  possess.  But  emotional  tra- 
dition can  linger  long  in  the  heart  of  a  crowd,  though  it 
cannot  be  completely  written  down  even  by  a  poet.  This 
brings  us  to  consider  how  a  crowd  can  be  extended  through 
time  as  well  as  space,  and  the  consequent  results  of  that 

57 


The   Crowd  in    Peace   and   War 

temporal  extension  in  their  effect  upon  the  units  at  any 
moment  composing  it. 

We  may  take  the  House  of  Commons  as  type  of  one 
crowd  which  has  a  long  life,  and  is  formed  of  successive 
generations  of  individuals.  From  the  present  back  to  its 
beginning  there  may  have  been,  there  probably  has  been, 
an  unbroken  series  of  overlapping  memberships.  Mem- 
bers of  the  House  to-day  may  indeed  be  in  veritable 
physical  connexion  with  the  House  of,  say,  the  fourteenth 
century.  The  people  of  a  given  day  are  all  in  physical 
contact  with  one  another.  Each  meets  many,  each  of 
them  many  more,  and  so  on,  so  that  the  impression  pro- 
duced by  one  upon  another  may  be  transferred  to  a  third, 
on  to  a  fourth,  to  a  hundredth,  to  a  thousandth,  till  by 
physical  transference  it  reaches  the  very  end  of  the  earth, 
without  any  intervention  of  writing  or  printing.  Thus 
also,  in  the  case  of  the  House  of  Commons,  the  general 
impression  produced  by  a  man  on  his  contemporary  mem- 
bers in  the  fourteenth  century,  may  have  been  transmitted 
by  the  survivors  among  them  to  the  new  members  of  the 
next  generation,  and  by  them  to  those  that  followed  them, 
and  so  on  down  to  the  present  day.  Personal  contact 
with  the  past  through  successive  generations  is  thus  similar 
to  personal  contact  with  remote  places  through  moving 
individuals. 

Dominant  personalities  have  left  a  continuing  impres- 
sion on  the  assembly  to  which  they  belonged.  Fox, 
Burke,  Pitt,  and  all  the  rest  still  influence,  still  to  a  certain 
extent  survive,  in  the  House  of  Commons  of  to-day.  Its 
tone  and  spirit  would  be  a  little  different  from  what  they 
are  but  for  them.     The  last  newly-elected  member,  when 

58 


Crowd-Continuity 

he  takes  his  seat,  comes  within  the  range,  the  actual  still 
operative  physical  range,  of  those  bygone  influences. 
Gladstone  still  affects  him,  though  he  may  not,  probably 
does  not,  realise  it;  Disraeli  in  some  degree  has  influence 
over  him;  and  all  the  great  aristocrats  of  the  past  as  well 
as  all  the  great  tribunes  of  the  people  live  on  in  the  last 
batch  of  those  Labour  Members  who  have  not  merely 
been  elected  to  but  have  been  captured  by  the  spirit  of 
that  undying  assembly.  Its  great  men  too  were  often  as 
much  fashioned  by  it  as  it  by  them.  Imagine  a  General 
Election  taking  place  to-day  in  which  not  a  single  former 
member  were  returned;  imagine  that  brand-new  House 
meeting  but  inheriting  no  permanent  officials,  no  rules  of 
procedure,  no  recorded  or  remembered  customs.  Sup- 
pose too  that  the  existing  Parliament  buildings  had  been 
burnt  to  the  ground,  that  a  new  building  had  to  be  devised 
for  the  new  House,  and  that  no  one  knew  what  the  form, 
the  seating,  and  all  the  other  important  details  of  the  old 
one  had  been.  Evidently  such  a  House  of  Commons  would 
fail  to  resemble  in  many  important  respects  the  body 
we  know.  It  would  represent  the  people  of  the  United 
Kingdom  at  the  moment,  but  the  actual  House  of 
Commons  also  represents  in  some  degree  the  gene- 
rations that  have  passed.  When  the  London  County 
Council  was  for  the  first  time  called  into  being,  it 
was  a  body  without  traditions,  not  elected  even  by 
old  parties  with  characteristic  policies.  It  had  no  build- 
ing prepared  for  it,  no  permanent  officials.  Everything 
had  to  be  created.  Anyone  who  remembers  that  first 
Council  and  compares  it  with  the  existing  body  will  recog- 
nise a  great  difference  between  them.     That  indeed  was 

59 


The   Crowd   in    Peace   and   War 

born  in  enthusiasm,  a  new  enthusiasm  for  London.  Its 
members  were  ready  for  all  manner  of  hard  work  and  self- 
sacrifice,  but  they  had  to  find  out  what  they  could  do, 
how  they  could  co-operate,  how  oppose  what  seemed  to 
them  wrong  principles;  they  had  to  discover  what  each 
one  was  good  for  and  how  his  capacity  and  eagerness 
could  be  harnessed  and  made  available  for  the  common 
purpose.  Nowadays  the  London  County  Council  has 
no  such  problems.  Its  rules  are  formulated  and  have 
received  many  precise  interpretations  to  meet  particular 
and  unforseen  situations.  Its  parties  are  organised.  Its 
Committees  have  the  area  exactly  defined  within  which 
each  works.  It  has  begun  to  accumulate  traditions 
and  prejudices.  It  has  built  up  a  body  of  permanent 
officials  trained  in  its  service.  It  possesses  a  definite  spirit 
and  is  well  launched  on  what  will  probably  be  a  long  career. 
It  still  possesses  much  of  the  enthusiasm  and  ambition 
of  youth,  but  it  already  grasps  at  the  splendours  which 
every  long-lived  crowd  likes  to  obtain  at  the  expense  of 
the  individuals  who  generate  it.  There  is  no  reason  why 
a  public  body  should  be  splendidly  housed.  There  is  no 
reason  why  it  should  work  in  a  palace.  A  row  of  ordinary 
houses  would  do  for  its  offices  and  any  shaped  hall  for  its 
general  assembly.  But  it  has  the  power  to  house  itself  as 
it  pleases  at  the  public  expense;  it  imposes  upon  the  public 
by  pretending  that  the  public's  glory  lies  in  the  splendour 
of  its  representatives'  accommodation;  and  it  votes  itself 
a  palace  beside  the  Thames  in  open  and  shameless  rivalry 
with  the  Houses  of  Parliament.  Such  is  the  way  of  rep- 
resentative crowds  which  are  not  controlled  by  the  veto 

of  wise  individuals. 

60 


Crowd-Continuity 

The  London  County  Council  at  its  first  assembling  had 

the  Parliaments  and  municipal  assemblies  of  the  world  for 

examples.     The  House  of  Commons  when  first  it  met  had 

no  such  forerunners.     It  had  to  find  itself  and  to  shape 

its  own  structure  and  environment.     That  was  a  long  and 

gradual  proccess.     By  contest  with  the  Crown  and  with 

the  House  of  Lords  it  slowly  fashioned  and  slowlier  still 

learnt  its  own  powers;    it  likewise  learnt  to  know  itself. 

Always  divided  by  parties,  it  yet  always  retained  and 

indeed  continually  increased  its  sense  of  its  own  separate 

collective  life.     Whig  and  Tory  might  be  violently  opposed. 

They  became  as  one  when  the  dignity  of  the  House  was 

assailed.     Thus  in  process  of  time  the  spirit  of  the  House 

took  form,  and  with  each  generation  it  came  to  enshrine  an 

ever  widening  volume  of  tradition.     It  set  its  mark  upon 

its  members  with  ever  increasing  inevitability,  and  that 

mark  grew  more  precise  and  individual  with  the  passing 

of  the  generations.     They  came  and  went,  but  the  House 

remained.     Its  political  complexion  might  change;    the 

social  levels  from  which  its  members  were  drawn  might 

become  more  various ;    the  House  did  not  itself  alter  in 

spirit    with    any    corresponding   rapidity.     It   altered   of 

course.     All  things  that  have  life  grow  and  change  and 

ultimately  become  old  and  pass  away.     But  the  life  of  the 

House  of  Commons  has  been  long  and  it  is  not  yet  coming 

to  an  end.     The  generations  vanish  swiftly.    The  collective 

body  changes  slowly.     It  preserves  its  ancient  traditions. 

Its  spirit  is  largely  traditional.     One  generation  may  alter 

it  a  little,  may  engraft  on  it  some  new  ideal,  may  widen 

its  outlook  in  some  direction,  but  the  largest  factor  in  its 

spirit  at  any  moment  is  not  the  element  contributed  to  it 

61 


The   Crowd   in    Peace   and   War 

by  its  existing  members,  but  the  vast  inheritance  it  has 
received  from  all  the  generations  which  have  preceded 
them. 

In  these  respects  the  House  of  Commons  is  like  any  other 
collective  body,  membership  in  which  is  of  a  defined  and 
limited  character.  Such  is  a  public  school,  a  college,  a 
university.  All  alike  are  the  guardians  of  tradition  and 
inherit  most  of  the  spirit  which  they  incorporate  and 
transmit.  Without  organised  crowds  the  generations 
would  not  be  held  together  as  they  are.  The  vitality 
present  at  any  moment  in  a  group  of  this  kind  is  far 
stronger  than  its  constituent  members  at  any  moment 
could  contribute.  They  supply  its  executive  limbs,  but 
the  force  that  moves  them  comes  from  far  back  among 
the  generations  whose  bodies  rest  from  labour.  The  fire 
that  is  within  them  is  none  of  their  kindling;  they  have 
but  to  tend  the  flame. 

The  Japanese,  with  their  beautiful  social  instinct  and 
their  recognition  of  the  priceless  value  of  continuity, 
express  this  indebtedness  of  the  present  to  the  past  in 
a  very  beautiful  form.  After  their  victorious  campaign 
against  Russia,  they  performed  a  remarkable  national 
ceremony.  Headed  by  their  King  they  summoned  the 
spirits  of  their  ancestors  to  receive  the  thanks  of  the 
living  for  what  the  dead  had  enabled  them  to  accom- 
plish. They  placed  the  laurels  of  victory  not  around 
their  own  brows,  but  on  the  tombs  of  the  forefathers  that 
begat  them  and  had  generated  and  infused  into  the 
people  those  ideals  and  that  spirit  which  had  enabled 
them  to  attain  their  success.  The  ceremony  expressed  a 
profound  truth.     Of  the  Chinese  also,  it  is  written,  that  for 

62 


Crowd-Continuity 

them  the  generations  past  and  the  generations  to  come 
form  with  those  that  are  alive  one  single  whole.  All  live 
eternally,  though  it  is  only  some  that  happen  at  any 
moment  to  be  upon  the  earth.  They  think  of  Humanity 
as  a  single  Being,  spiritual  and  eternal,  manifesting  itself 
in  time  in  the  series  of  generations. 

What  any  generation  can  accomplish  in  faith  and 
growth  is  little  compared  with  what  has  been  accomplished 
for  them  by  the  generations  that  have  gone  before.  This 
is  evident  enough  in  the  case  of  material  possessions  and 
the  great  treasure  of  the  world's  art,  but  it  is  still  more 
true  for  the  world's  ideals.  It  is  these  that  are  the  most 
precious  of  all  its  belongings,  and  for  the  preservation  of 
these  it  has,  not  individuals,  however  great,  but  crowds  to 
thank.  For  let  me  declare  again  that  it  is  in  crowds  that 
ideals  reside.  It  is  they  that  incorporate  them  and  they 
that  transmit  them.  An  individual  may  invent  an  ideal, 
but  unless  he  can  get  it  incorporated  in  a  crowd  it  is  bar- 
ren of  effect  and  dies  with  him.  Rail  against  the  crowd 
as  we  may  for  its  intolerance,  its  pride,  its  fickleness,  its 
lack  of  measure,  and  all  the  other  shortcomings  of  which 
we  are  only  too  easily  aware,  it  yet  remains  true  that 
upon  crowds  our  spiritual  life  depends,  that  from  them  we 
draw  our  enthusiasms,  and  to  them  we  owe  those  flames  of 
love  and  passion  and  glory  which  make  the  life  of  each 
individual  the  splendid  opportunity  that  it  is. 

Alas!  my  subject  runs  away  with  me,  and  many  a 
simple  fact  needing  to  be  set  down  plainly  in  its  place  is 
liable  to  be  forgotten  in  the  heat  of  writing.  I  have 
written  only  of  the  limited  crowds,  the  organised  bodies 
that  have  a  definite  membership,   but  others  of  more 

63 


The   Crowd   in    Peace   and   War 

nebulous  character  must  not  be  forgotten.  Such  is 
Society,  to  which  we  have  already  referred  in  another 
connexion.  That  likewise  develops  with  age  and  trans- 
mits its  changing  spirit  from  generation  to  generation. 
We  speak  lightly  of  "the  traditions  of  good  society,"  but 
no  one  can  overestimate  their  power  as  a  civilizing  agency. 
Time  is  an  essential  element  in  creating  them.  The 
spread  of  good  manners  downward  through  the  various 
strata  of  the  inhabitants  of  a  country  is  a  very  slow  pro- 
cess, though  in  normal  times  it  is  continuous,  and  occa- 
sionally may  be  hastened  by  purposeful  effort.  Thus 
in  our  own  day  the  labours  of  primary  school  teachers  — 
a  most  excellent  class  who  have  taken  up  much  of  the 
work  of  the  mediaeval  clergy  —  are  producing  an  already 
visible  effect  in  taming  the  savage  manners  of  the  lower 
orders,  as  those  still  living  can  remember  them.  Even 
so,  however,  good  manners  cannot  be  propagated  quickly. 
They  have  to  take  root  in  descending  layers  of  the  people, 
mainly  by  a  kind  of  induction  from  each  layer  to  the  one 
below  it,  and  this  inductive  process  is  liable  to  be  con- 
fused with  snobbery.  Women  are  the  principal  agents. 
They  become  civilized  in  any  rank  before  their  menfolk 
submit  to  the  process  under  their  direction. 

It  is  possible  to  make  a  good  guess  at  the  age  of  the 
civilisation  of  any  people  by  noticing  the  manners  of  the 
lowest  classes.  Thus  in  India  good  manners  are  prac- 
tically universal  and  are  as  much  the  prerogative  of  a 
sweeper  as  of  a  Maharaja.  The  same  is  true  of  the  Arabs 
and  all  Bedouin  folk,  wrho  have  cultivated  manners  from 
an  extreme  antiquity.  Egypt  likewise,  and  for  the  same 
reason,  is  inhabited  by  a  highly  civilised  people.     When 

64 


Crowd-Continuity 

we  pass  to  Europe  the  condition  is  markedly  different. 
Only  in  Spain  are  good  manners  almost  universal,  and 
that  is  because  there  the  ancient  civilisation  of  Rome 
was  but  slightly  set  back  by  the  numerically  small  num- 
bers of  the  Teutonic  invaders  and  was  soon  afterwards 
reinforced  by  the  distinguished  conquering  Moors.  All 
round  the  Mediterranean  civilisation  is  of  greater  an- 
tiquity than  further  north,  and  consequently  manners  are 
good,  if  not  of  such  high  finish  as  those  of  the  East.  The 
ancient  Celts  fell  early  under  the  influence  of  good  tradi- 
tions and  fine  ideals.  These  were  expressed  in  the  great 
volume  of  poetry  which  we  know  them  to  have  produced. 
Extinct  though  it  be,  we  may  infer,  from  the  strength  and 
gifts  of  the  Celtic  race,  that  its  poetry  must  have  been  of 
high  and  perhaps  Homeric  quality.  Celtic  civilisation, 
unhelped  by  Rome,  is  the  foundation  and  ultimate  cause 
of  the  good  manners  of  the  peoples  of  Ireland  and  the 
Highlands  of  Scotland.  Rome  in  her  turn  must  have 
been  an  important  agent  in  spreading  good  manners, 
whilst  the  Italians  all  came  within  the  sphere  of  the 
ancient  Mediterranean  civilisation. 

What  degraded  European  manners  was  the  Barbarian 
invasions.  The  inroading  Teutons  who  flooded  the 
Roman  Empire  came  out  of  their  gloomy  forests  with  the 
manners  of  bears,  as  the  Sagas  would  have  enabled  us 
to  judge  had  we  not  enough  surviving  evidence  before  our 
eyes.  The  present  rude  and  uncivilised  behaviour  of  the 
German  army  is  not  an  index  of  depraved  nature,  but 
rather  of  immaturity.  They  are  animated,  as  we  know, 
by  Prussian  ideals,  and  the  Prussians  are  of  all  European 

peoples  chronologically  nearest  to  barbarism.     Modern 

65 


The   Crowd  in    Peace   and  War 

conditions  have  enabled  them  suddenly  to  become,  not 
civilised,  but  rich  and  strong,  and  they  not  unnaturally 
have  mistaken  strength  for  a  higher  kind  of  power  which 
they  must  learn  by  actual  experiment  that  it  is  not.  In 
true  civilisation  they  remain,  and  no  blame  to  them,  the 
most  backward  people  in  Europe;  the  manners  of  the 
Prussian  lieutenant  are  proof  of  it. 

Moreover,  in  proportion  to  the  volume  of  the  Teutonic 
element  in  any  place  is  the  thickness  of  the  stratum  of 
population  burdened  with  bad  manners.  Starting  from 
the  centre  of  France  and  journeying  north-eastward,  the 
manners  of  the  masses  of  the  people  degenerate  till  they 
reach  their  lowest  level  in  Prussia.  This  is  not  due  to  any 
original  sin  or  depravity  in  the  German  people,  but  simply 
to  the  fact  that  they  have  not  been  in  contact  with  civili- 
sation long  enough  for  good  manners  to  permeate  the 
folk.  England  was  deluged  with  this  strong  but  ill- 
civilised  immigration  in  the  fifth  and  following  centuries. 
It  met  with  a  relatively  feeble  population,  partly  civilised 
by  the  Celts,  and  they  to  some  extent  raised  in  time  the 
level  of  the  mass.  In  France  more  of  the  old  element 
survived,  and  French  influence  has  always  been  a  great 
factor,  even  before  the  Norman  conquest,  in  civilising 
England.  But  even  so  there  have  only  passed  over  us 
some  fifteen  centuries  since  the  barbarian  deluge,  and 
that  is  not  long  enough.  It  has  taken  five  thousand 
years  at  least  to  generate  the  good  manners  of  India. 
Time  will  do  as  much  for  us  unless  a  new  barbarian 
deluge  occurs. 

The  measure  of  the  civilisation  of  a  people  is  not,  as 
the  science-poisoned  folk  of  to-day  believe,  its  equipment 


Crowd   Continuity 

with  railways,  trams,  motor-vehicles,  telegraphs,  tele- 
phones, and  the  like,  nor  even  its  efficiency  in  drains, 
water-supply,  hygiene,  and  other  material  adjustments. 
The  true  measure  of  what  is  rightly  called  civilisation,  of 
that  quality  which  the  word  "civilisation"  was  coined 
to  express,  is  manners,  —  not  the  manners  of  the  aris- 
tocracy, or  upper  classes,  but  those  of  the  lower  and 
lowest  classes.  Not  till  all  the  people  have  good  man- 
ners are  they  describable  as  wholly  civilised.  The  North 
and  West  Europeans  and  the  English-speaking  folk  of 
North  America  have  not,  as  a  mass,  had  experience  of 
high  civilisation,  and  do  not  know  what  the  word  really 
means.  They  use  it,  but  of  course  they  use  it  incorrectly. 
The  French  are  more  civilised  than  the  English  and  the 
Spaniards  than  the  French.  The  people  of  the  Western 
continent  are  necessarily  less  civilised  than  those  of 
Europe  and  Asia.  All  of  us  are  on  the  up  grade,  but  we 
have  a  long  road  to  travel  before  any  of  us  can  come  to 
be  a  people  of  gentlemen,  as  the  Indian  people  actually 
are. 

Thus  the  age  of  a  crowd  is  an  important  element  in 
its  tone  and  consequent  power  of  affecting  the  individuals 
composing  it.  A  newly  founded  school  or  University  can- 
not influence  its  members  in  the  same  way  as  an  old 
foundation.  It  may  provide  them  with  more  exact,  effi- 
cient, and  elaborate  teaching  in  the  sciences  and  other 
subjects  of  study,  but  it  cannot  put  on  them  any  indi- 
vidual hall-mark.  At  most  it  can  but  start  by  incor- 
porating the  general  ideals  of  its  age  and  country  and 
giving  an  opportunity  for  strong  individual  teachers  to 
exercise  their  personal  influence  in  laying  the  founda- 

67 


The   Crowd  in    Peace   and   War 

tion  of  what  will  in  time  grow  to  be  an  institutional  tone. 
A  realisation  of  this  fact  has  led  the  students  in  young 
American  universities  to  supplement  the  lack  of  local 
tradition  by  aid  of  the  so-called  Secret  Societies,  —  Phi 
Beta  Kappa,  Alpha  Delta  Phi,  and  so  forth,  —  which  are 
intercollegiate  and  have  been  formed  and  fostered,  each 
one,  to  encourage  and  enforce  some  special  undergradu- 
ate virtue  or  type. 

It  is  by  age  that  any  society,  from  a  debating  club  up 
to  a  nation,  accumulates  traditions  and  becomes  enriched 
with  ideals  and  the  memory  of  past  emotions.  The  people 
of  any  generation  are  what  their  forefathers  made  them  and 
are  only  in  a  small  degree  themselves  responsible  either 
for  the  growth  or  for  the  decay  that  may  happen  in  their 
time.  For  there  are  ideals  that  make  for  decay  as  others 
for  growth,  and  every  society  which  is  born  must  some 
day  perish.  The  Roman  Empire  perished  utterly  by  the 
breaking  up  of  its  organisation,  the  destruction  of  its 
ideals,  and  the  inroads  of  masses  of  new  people.  Italy 
went  on  existing,  even  the  City  of  Rome  continued,  but 
there  was  a  break,  a  solution  of  continuity.  The  old 
crowd  died  and  a  new  one  came  to  occupy  its  place.  The 
same  misfortune  overtook  Greece.  Neither  modern  Italy 
nor  modern  Greece  is  a  continuation  of  the  old.  They 
merely  live  in  the  old  house.  But  modern  Japan  is  a 
direct  continuation  of  old  Japan  and  has  suffered  no 
solution  of  continuity  in  its  years  of  growth.  India,  for 
all  its  revolutions  and  invasions,  has  in  its  central  structure 
the  unsevered  stem  of  Brahminism.  Even  Egypt,  not- 
withstanding the  Greek,  Roman,  and  Arab  conquests,  is 
still  at  heart  the  land  of  the  Pharaohs  and  still  embodies 

68 


Crowd-Continuity 

the  same  ideals  which  the  pyramids  expressed  for  their 
builders.  Pride  of  race,  of  nationhood,  of  citizenship  — 
these  are  emotions  which  no  one  will  undervalue,  or 
consider  to  be  anything  but  a  precious  birthright  for 
those  who  inherit  them.  They  are  what  the  individual 
inherits  from  the  crowd  into  which  he  happens  to  be 
born,  in  proportion  to  its  age  and  its  historical  accomplish- 
ments, to  the  great  names  it  honours  and  to  the  great 
deeds  its  fathers  have  wrought.  It  is  a  notable  power 
for  good.  " Civis  Romanus  sum,"  —  "a  citizen  of  no  mean 
"city." 


CHAPTER   V 
CROWD-INSTINCTS 

ALL  crowds  possess,  amongst  other  qualities,  two 
instincts  which  are  of  special  importance  in  rela- 
tion to  our  present  inquiry:  the  instincts  of  ex- 
pansion and  of  self-preservation.  The  former  is  indeed 
to  a  large  extent  the  outcome  of  the  latter,  because  the 
larger  a  crowd  becomes  the  less  easily  can  it  be  suppressed. 
Both,  in  fact,  are  normal  qualities  of  a  living  entity. 
Growth  is  the  sign  of  life.  Whatever  lives  must  have  its 
birth  from  something  that  went  before,  its  early  stages  of 
weakness  and  comparative  formlessness,  then  the  stage 
when  it  takes  on  a  definite  and  individual  form,  after 
that  a  longer  or  shorter  period  of  growth,  succeeded  by  a 
time  of  culmination,  and  finally  the  inevitable  decline  and 
death.  Through  all  these  stages  the  instinct  of  self- 
preservation  is  not  absent,  for  even  in  extreme  old  age 
it  not  uncommonly  survives.  Few  living  things  yield 
themselves  willingly  to  extinction  —  crowds  hardly  ever. 
The  desire  for  expansion  finds  its  counterpart  in  a 
crowd's  attractiveness,  to  which  reference  has  already 
been  made.  Crowds,  like  some  serpents,  fascinate  the 
victims  they  are  about  to  devour.  For  in  this  case  also 
the  victim  does  not  merely  join  himself  to  the  crowd,  like 
one  brick  in  a  building  to  another,  but  he  is,  in  certain 
cases  at  any  rate,  so  absorbed  and  digested  by  it  as  to  lose 

70 


Crowd-Instincts 

his  individuality  altogether  and  become  an  integral  part 
of  the  larger  creature,  as  a  cell  in  living  tissue.  The 
hunger  of  a  crowd  may  be  compared  with  the  hunger  of 
an  animal;  it  must  assimilate,  not  only  that  it  may  grow 
but  that  it  may  merely  remain  alive.  The  individual 
cells  in  tissue  are  worn  out,  consumed,  and  have  to  be 
replaced;  so  is  it  with  the  units  of  a  crowd.  By  death, 
by  change  of  mind,  by  alteration  in  the  circumstances  of 
individual  life,  every  crowd  is  being  destroyed  all  the 
time,  and  the  destruction  of  its  tissue  must  be  made  good. 
This  is  obvious  in  the  case,  for  instance,  of  a  school  or 
university,  and  it  is  hardly  less  evident  in  a  church  or  a 
political  body.  All  clamour  for  converts,  for  new  adhe- 
rents, new  members.  Nowadays  many  crowds,  from 
nations  downwards,  try  to  keep  accurate  statistics  of  their 
membership  from  year  to  year  so  as  to  detect  the  first 
signs  of  a  falling  off.  The  census  of  a  people,  like  the 
temperature  of  a  human  body,  is  a  valuable  indication  of 
the  national  health.  When  any  undesirable  change  is 
registered  the  political  physicians  hurry  forward  to  diag- 
nose a  disease  and  prescribe  remedies.  At  such  times 
the  crowd  becomes  more  or  less  alarmed,  as  several 
European  nations  have  been  in  recent  years  by  the  falling- 
off  of  their  birth-rate.  The  sudden  drop  in  the  birth-rate 
of  Germany  may  have  been  one  of  the  impulses  which 
impelled  the  governing  class  in  that  country  to  plunge 
Europe  into  war,  and  thus,  in  case  of  victory,  to  provide 
a  new  stimulus  of  growth  to  the  Teutonic  crowd. 

The  instinct  of  Expansion  has  been  throughout  all  his- 
tory one  of  the  great  causes  of  war,  not,  as  I  trust  here- 
after to  show,  the  deepest  seated  cause,  but  an  important 

71 


The   Crowd  in   Peace  and   War 

contributory  cause.  In  earlier  stages  of  civilisation  it 
was  oftener  operative  than  in  modern  times;  indeed,  the 
ordinary  run  of  histories  seem  concerned  with  little  else 
throughout  two  or  three  thousand  years  than  wars  of 
expansion.  It  was  by  such  wars,  or  by  wars  seeming  to 
be  such,  that  the  states  and  finally  the  Empires  of  the 
ancient  world  were  built  up.  The  growth  of  organised 
humanity  was  largely  effected  by  adding  village  to  village 
till  small  states  arose,  and  then  by  adding  statelet  to  state- 
let; and  this  was  almost  wholly  accomplished  by  war 
and  conquest.  In  the  remote  past  of  earliest  Egypt  and 
Chaldaea  we  can  dimly  perceive  the  rudimentary  pro- 
cess going  forward.  Thus  Egypt  grew  to  be  a  single 
kingdom  by  an  agglomeration  of  small  units  and  the 
contemporary  development  of  an  internal  structure  that 
gave  to  the  whole  a  common  life,  while  simultaneously 
the  little  local  gods  and  totems  were  amalgamated  into  a 
pantheon  and  a  national  religion  was  wrought  out  of  them. 
Thus  Babylonia  arose,  thus  the  Hittites,  Assyria,  the 
iEgean  power,  and  so  forth.  And  then  the  kingdoms 
fought  one  another  into  Empires.  The  Babylonian 
Empire  fell  to  the  Assyrian,  the  Egyptian  and  Assyrian 
to  the  Persian,  the  Persian  to  Alexander,  and  the  Alex- 
andrian to  all-embracing  Rome.  With  each  increase  the 
internal  structure  became  more  complex  and  efficient, 
religious  ideas  more  comprehensive,  mankind  more  so- 
cially alive,  till  finally  it  was  possible  for  a  world  religion 
to  be  born  and  a  new  cycle  of  human  development  to 
begin  in  the  large  Empire  of  Rome,  which  contained  or 
was  in  contact  with  all  then  existing  centres  of  civilisation. 
The  instinct  of  national  expansion  is,  however,  only  an 

72 


Crowd-Instincts 

example  on  a  large  scale  of  what  is  felt  by  every  crowd, 
even  the  most  ephemeral.  A  public  meeting  loves  to  be 
crammed.  The  tighter  the  pack  the  warmer  the  en- 
thusiasm. Individuals  would  be  less  uncomfortable  if 
they  had  more  room;  yet  what  meeting  would  willingly 
thin  itself?  If  the  hall  is  but  half  full  the  air  is  better 
to  breathe  and  all  present  can  sit  at  ease;  yet  no  one  is 
pleased  by  such  considerations;  on  the  contrary  a  thinly 
attended  meeting  lacks  life  and  is  far  harder  to  deal  with 
than  a  pack.  Those  present  want  a  bigger  company. 
They  welcome  an  influx,  and  if  by  some  management  the 
place  fills  up,  a  general  sense  of  satisfaction  is  spread. 
Ten  meetings  of  a  thousand  could  be  much  more  easily 
addressed  than  one  meeting  of  ten  thousand,  and  those 
present  could  more  quietly  hear  and  calmly  estimate  the 
value  of  a  speaker's  arguments.  Moreover  the  ten  small 
meetings  would  be  cheaper  to  organise  and,  if  reason  were 
the  thing  appealed  to,  much  more  efficient  than  the  one 
great  meeting.  But  what  do  we  in  fact  see?  An  English 
movement  dates  its  success  from  the  day  when  it  can  fill 
the  Albert  Hall  with  a  shouting  throng;  and  it  is  an 
obvious  fact  that  one  successful,  enthusiastic  Albert  Hall 
gathering  is  worth  more  for  purposes  of  propaganda  than 
a  score  of  smaller  gatherings  in  unimportant  halls  and 
chapels. 

Every  crowd  desires  to  grow.  The  agencies  and  arts 
of  propaganda  are  the  expression  of  this  desire.  Public 
meetings,  advertisements  of  all  kinds,  publicity  in  every 
sense,  the  circulation  of  literature,  the  enterprise  of 
newspapers,  the  adoption  and  diffusion  of  popular  cries 

or  popular  songs  —  these  and  all  manner  of  like  activities 

73 


The   Crowd   in   Peace   and   War 

have  no  other  end  than  to  spread  abroad  the  ideals  of 
crowds  and  attract  adherents  to  them.  But  there  are 
other  very  significant  actions  which  display  the  crowd- 
nature  even  more  plainly.  A  crowd  that  has  never  come 
physically  together  gains  greatly  in  vigour  if  it  can  be  in 
whole  or  even  in  part  embodied.  If  it  can  be  seen  it  will 
bring  to  bear  on  outsiders  that  attractiveness  which  every 
embodied  crowd  possesses.  If  it  can  see  itself  it  will 
grow  hot.  Hence  the  great  political  demonstrations  which 
are  sometimes  organised,  —  the  huge  assemblages,  for  in- 
stance, of  the  Primrose  League,  or  the  mammoth  meetings 
in  Hyde  Park.  The  people  who  attend  them  only  for 
the  most  part  know  that  speaking  is  going  forward  at 
certain  centres.  Many  of  them  hear  nothing,  but  that 
makes  no  difference;  they  see  one  another,  or  rather  they 
see  the  crowd,  and  they  are  very  liable  to  catch  its  en- 
thusiasm and  become  a  part  of  that  greater  body  of  which 
those  present  are  a  representative  portion.1 

1  The  following  remarks    on    theatre-audiences    by    Mr.    Walkley 
are  notable  in  this  connexion. 

"  The  truth  is,  the  behaviour  of  the  audience,  the  theatrical  crowd,  is 
not  profitably  to  be  studied  as  something  separate  and  peculiar.  It 
ought,  we  submit,  to  be  considered  as  part  of  a  larger  subject,  the  behav- 
iour of  the  crowd  in  general.  A  crowd  has  an  individuality  of  its  own, 
merely  because  it  is  a  crowd,  and  it  cannot  but  be  interested  in  its  own 
individuality,  apart  from  all  reference  to  the  cause  which  has  brought 
it  together.  The  crowd  finds  itself  an  interesting  spectacle.  From  the 
moment  of  its  formation  it  becomes  self-conscious,  self-assertive.  To 
absorb  its  attention  —  that  is  to  say,  to  make  it  forget  its  own  existence 
—  is  an  extremely  difficult  feat.  How  many  platform  orators,  how  many 
speakers  in  the  House  of  Commons,  how  many  preachers,  how  many 
actors  can  do  this?  So  few  in  any  given  generation  that  the  whole  gen- 
eration knows  their  names.  In  his  preface  to  Le  Fils  Naturel  the  younger 
Dumas  compared  the  theatre  in  this  respect  with  the  church.    'Like 

74 


Crowd-Instincts 

An  even  more  rudimentary  application  of  the  principle 
of  crowd-attractiveness  is  the  organisation  of  processions. 
The  longer  they  can  be  made  the  more  useful  they  are,  and 
the  more  they  attract  and  impose  upon  the  outsider. 
Nothing  would  seem  less  likely  to  convert  an  opponent 
into  an  advocate  of  female  suffrage  than  to  see  a  number 
of  women  marching  in  orderly  sequence  along  a  street, 
even  if  they  carry  flaming  inscribed  banners  and  dis- 
tribute leaflets  as  they  go.  But  political  organisers  know 
the  value  of  such  efforts,  and  are  willing  to  spend  a  con- 
siderable fraction  of  their  resources  upon  them.  A  re- 
markable instance  of  this  crude  method  of  propaganda 
was  the  procession  of  "Business  men"  which  marched 
along  Fifth  Avenue,  New  York,  to  show  themselves  as  a 
crowd  opposed  to  the  election  of  Mr.  Bryan  to  the  Presi- 
dency of  the  United  States,  and  to  the  ideas  of  his  sup- 
porters as  represented  in  his  person.  No  one  made  any 
speeches.  The  "Business  men"  just  marched  along  in 
ordered  ranks  and  showed  their  mass  for  what  it  was 

the  church,'  he  said,  'we  (i.e.,  the  dramatists)  address  ourselves  to  men 

assembled  together,  and  you  cannot  gain  the  ear  of  the  multitude  for 

"'any  length  of  time  or  in  any  efficacious  way  save  in  the  name  of  their 

'"higher  interests.'    What  is  called,  then,  the  'inattention'  of  the  crowd 

'  is  proof  of  the  independence,  and  the  potency,  of  its  existence.  It  is  not 
"really  inattention;  its  attention,  on  the  contrary,  is  of  the  keenest,  but 
"  it  is  directed  to  itself.  Hence  the  perpetual  difficulty  of  all  arts  which, 
"  like  the  art  of  the  theatre,  involve  the  presence  of  a  crowd.  The  crowd 
"  has  assembled  because  it  is  interested  in  the  particular  art,  but,  when 

'  once  it  is  assembled,  it  finds  another  subject  of  interest  and  a  dangerous 
"rival  to  the  artistic  subject  —  namely,  itself.  The  great  dramatist,  the 
"great  actor,  is  the  man  who  can  master  this  enemy  of  his,  the  absorbed 
"  delight  of  the  crowd  in  its  own  existence.  If  it  is  true  nowadays  that 
"  'half  the  people  in  the  theatre  do  not  listen  to  the  play,'  we  fear  that  is 
"  an  indictment  of  the  play,  not  of  the  people." 

75 


The   Crowd   in    Peace   and   War 

worth.  The  effect  produced  upon  public  opinion  was  con- 
siderable. If  it  did  not  defeat  the  candidate,  it  contrib- 
uted to  his  defeat,  and  that,  not  because  of  the  individual 
weight  and  wisdom  of  this  and  the  other  person  marching 
along,  but  because  of  the  crowd  of  them,  all  united  by  a 
common  emotion  of  hostility  to  Mr.  Bryan's  raw  political 
theory  of  things,  a  hostility  just  now  for  the  fourth  time 
vindicated,  despite  President  Woodrow  Wilson's  "affec- 
' '  tionate ' '  solicitude. 

Further,  the  crowd  not  only  needs  to  make  adherents 
and  thus  maintain  its  existence  and  increase  in  volume 
and  power;  it  needs  no  less  to  assimilate,  to  digest,  the 
individuals  which  it  swallows  up.  The  whole  force  of 
public  opinion  within  a  crowd  is  bent  on  compelling  the 
complete  identification  of  the  individual  with  itself.  The 
business  of  every  crowd  is  to  change  free  individuals  into 
crowd-units,  to  make  them  feel  with  it,  act  with  it,  and  if 
need  be  give  their  very  lives  for  its  benefit.  The  domi- 
nance of  the  crowd  over  the  individuals  composing  it  is 
one  of  the  most  important  facts  to  be  noted  and  remem- 
bered. A  thousand  illustrations  might  be  cited.  It  is 
nowhere  more  evident  than  in  the  case  of  political  parties. 
Most  intelligent  men  if  left  to  themselves  would  have  a 
set  of  political  views  of  their  own,  and  no  two  would  think 
quite  alike.  That  kind  of  freedom  of  the  individual  mind 
is  most  undesirable  from  the  party  organiser's  point  of 
view.  He  wants  "good  party  men"  and  them  only. 
Gilbert  put  the  common  point  of  view  wittily  in  the  well- 
known  lines:  — 

"  Every  boy  and  every  girl  that's  born  into  the  world  alive 
"Is  either  a  little  Liberal  or  else  a  little  Conservative." 

76 


Crowd-Instincts 

The  business  of  the  local  politician  is  first  to  catch 
adherents  to  his  party  and  then  to  drill  them  into  "good 
party  men,"  so  that  they  accept  the  views  of  party  leaders 
whole  and  without  question,  and  change  them  without 
protest  when  ordered  to  do  so.  Thus  our  Free-Trade 
Conservative  party  was  all  but  transformed  into  a  Pro- 
tectionist body  at  the  word  of  command  of  some  of  its 
leaders.  The  individual  conservative  who  adhered  to 
the  views  he  had  held  for  a  lifetime  became  a  party -pariah 
if  he  refused  to  change  them.  The  same  thing  happened 
to  the  other  side.  The  old  Liberal  doctrine  of  Laissez 
faire  was  given  up  when  the  Socialists  captured  the  party 
organisation,  and  those  old  liberals  who  adhered  to  the 
views  they  had  learnt  from  Cobden,  Bright,  and  Mill, 
likewise  became  pariahs  in  their  own  party  and  found 
their  very  names  and  watchwords  stolen  from  them  and 
used  for  the  furtherance  of  views  the  very  opposite  to  those 
that  had  given  them  birth.  The  fact  is  that  political 
parties  are  not  the  incorporation  of  any  reasoned  set  of 
opinions  or  political  theories,  but  only  of  a  group  of  emo- 
tions. Views  and  theories  can  only  reside  in  a  brain,  and 
that  no  crowd  possesses.  The  business  of  the  politician, 
as  we  shall  see,  is  to  form  views  and  theories  and  then 
catch  hold  of  a  crowd  and  by  passion  and  enthusiasm, 
not  by  argument,  compel  them  to  carry  those  views  into 
effect.  "Don't  reason  with  them,"  said  the  late  Mr. 
Henry  Labouchere  to  me;  "hardy  assertion  is  the  secret 
"of  all  political  success."  Hardy  assertion  may  evoke 
enthusiasm  and  thus  obtain  the  assent  of  a  crowd  when 
reasoning  would  fail. 

If  a  political  body  is  thus  despotic  over  its  members  it 

77 


The   Crowd  in   Peace   and  War 

is  not  in  this  respect  different  from  any  other  crowd.     Wit- 
ness the  despotism  of  opinion  in  a  public  school,  still 
more  in  a  religious  body.     Dogmatism  and  intolerance 
are  the  necessary  qualities  of  every  crowd,  so  that  to 
combat  and  neutralise  them  is  one  of  the  greatest  neces- 
sities of  every  age.     The  views  of  any  individual  may  be 
attacked  by  another  with  perfect  freedom,  but  the  mo- 
ment a  view  has  been  adopted  by  a  crowd  for  whatever 
reason  or  by  whatever  means,  that  crowd  considers  it 
treason  if  a  member  of  it  attacks  that  view.     To  do  so 
is  heresy.     Thus  M.  Anatole  France  writes,  "Un  here- 
'tique,  dit  Bossuet,  est  celui   qui  a  une  opinion  a  lui, 
'qui  suit  sa  prop  re  pensee  et  son  sentiment  particulier. 
'.  .  .  Ce  qui  est  vrai,  replique  M.  Bergeret,  c'est  que 
'les  hommes  animes  d'une  foi  commune  n'ont  rien  de 
'pluspresse  que  d'exterminer  ceux  qui  pensent  differem- 
'ment  surtout  quand  la  difference  est  tres  petite." 

Here  is  another  case  in  point,  illustrated  by  a  letter 
addressed  to  the  London  "Globe"  some  years  ago:  — 

"  Sir,  —  Being  in  Hyde  Park  this  afternoon  with  some 
"friends,  we  came  across  a  Meeting  being  held  by  a  pro- 
"Boer  from  Exeter  Hall,  who  was  denouncing  your  paper 
"for  urging  on  the  attack  to  break  up  their  meeting  on 
"Friday,  but  I  am  glad  to  say  he  had  no  hearing,  for 
"we  closed  around  him,  and  hundreds  of  us  started  sing- 
"ing  'Rule  Britannia'  and  'God  Save  the  Queen.'  He 
"was  in  a  tighter  corner  than  at  Exeter  Hall;  he  was 
"nearly  torn  to  pieces.  He  ran  for  his  life  down  Oxford 
"Street,  but  was  stopped  by  a  Hussar,  and  had  what  he 

"deserved.     He  was  rescued  by  the  police  and  was  taken 

78 


Crowd-Instincts 

"to  Marylebone  Lane  Police  Station  for  safety,  and  was 
"followed  by  the  crowd,  all  singing  the  national  airs. 
"When  arriving  at  the  station  we  sang  'God  Save  the 
"'Queen,'  and  the  policeman  who  was  escorting  him  had 
"the  pleasure  of  taking  off  this  pro-Boer's  hat,  as  he  was 
"not  gentleman  enough  himself,  after  which  the  crowd, 
"some  fifteen  hundred  strong,  marched  back  to  Hyde 
"Park  in  the  hopes  of  finding  some  more,  but  none  were 
"to  be  seen.  I  may  state  that  this  pro-Boer  stated  that 
"he  intended  sending  letters  of  protest  to  your  paper,  but 
"we  would  not  hear  him  read  them,  but  no  doubt  you  will 
"not  receive  them,  as  they  were  torn  up  by  one  of  the 
"crowd.  All  praise  is  due  to  your  paper  for  announcing 
"Friday's  meeting  in  Friday's  issue,  so  that  the  pro-Boers 
"could  not  have  it  all  their  own  way. 

"I  am,  yours,  etc., 

"True  Born  Englishman." 

"True  Born  Englishman"  no  doubt  considered  him- 
self to  be  expressing  highly  patriotic  sentiments  in  this 
remarkable  letter,  for  patriotism  masquerades  in  many 
forms.  Patriotism,  which  is  the  crowd-emotion  of  a 
Nation,  makes  at  times  supreme  claims  on  every  citizen 
and  enforces  them  by  a  public  opinion  so  powerful  that 
few  can  or  desire  to  evade  them.  In  time  of  war  patriot- 
ism demands  the  very  life  of  any  of  its  citizens,  and  the 
demand  is  enforced  by  all  kinds  of  sanctions.  To  the 
crowd  all  individuals  are  alike.  The  youthful  Darwin 
and  the  youthful  Bill  Sikes  are  the  same  to  it  when  war 
threatens  its  existence.  It  draws  them  into  the  ranks  side 
by  side,  drills  them  to  a  common  obedience,  and  sends 

79 


The   Crowd   in    Peace  and   War 

them  to  take  an  equal  chance  before  the  guns  of  the 
enemy.  The  crowd  does  not  think  much  of  the  death  of 
an  individual  (unless  he  be  of  the  crowd-exponent  order 
to  be  hereafter  mentioned).  What  is  death  to  a  man  is 
only  a  trifling  wound  to  a  crowd.  The  slaughter  of  many 
is  still  only  a  wound  to  the  collective  body,  and  if  it 
possesses  the  potentiality  of  life  and  growth,  that  wound 
will  heal  within  the  lifetime  of  the  next  generation.  From 
the  crowd's  point  of  view  all  its  units  must  some  day  die 
while  it  abides;  nor  does  their  death  matter.  "Who  dies 
"if  England  lives?"  The  crowd  gilds  the  death  of  those 
who  sacrifice  themselves  for  it  and  calls  the  dead  un- 
realised Darwin  and  the  dead  unmanifested  Bill  Sikes 
alike  heroes.  But  the  poor  young  man  who  would  have 
set  the  world  on  fire  is  dead  all  the  same.  Common 
crowd-opinion  is  that  his  death  has  been  worth  while. 
But  was  it?  Have  there  not  in  fact  been  individuals  who 
were  more  precious  than  many  a  nation,  though  perhaps 
it  might  be  argued  never  more  precious  than  the  nation 
that  produced  them?  For  the  national  crowd  at  any  rate 
the  death  of  any  individual  in  its  defence  is  worth  while, 
but  it  is  only  actually  and  in  very  truth  so  on  the  assump- 
tion that  crowd-life,  crowd-survival,  is  worth  more  than 
the  highest  individual  life. 

We  readily  assume  that  the  life  of  a  man  is  precious, 
that  to  five  is  worth  while,  that  life  means  something  and 
is  a  great  and  glorious  reality,  however  mysterious  and 
inexplicable  it  may  be.  Is  crowd-life  similarly  valuable 
and  in  a  higher  degree?  If  the  crowd  were  to  break  up, 
while  all  the  individuals  composing  it  lived  on,  would 
that  necessarily  be  a  catastrophe?     Has  the  crowd  also 

80 


Crowd-Instincts 

a  soul  for  whose  welfare  the  individual  is  justified  in 
sacrificing  his  own  life?  We  say  "Yes,"  speaking  the 
voice  of  public  opinion  impressed  upon  us  from  child- 
hood; but  is  public  opinion  right  in  the  nature  of  things, 
and  not  merely  from  the  crowd's  point  of  view?  Few 
people,  I  imagine,  could  off-hand  give  a  reasoned  and 
convincing  answer  to  this  question. 

If  I  were  to  say  —  as  the  further  progress  of  my  argu- 
ment will  show  that  I  am  far  from  saying  —  that  some 
individuals  are  far  more  precious  than  the  crowd,  and  ought 
by  no  means  to  sacrifice  their  lives  even  for  their  coun- 
try when  at  war;  if  I  were  to  claim  that  all  martyrs  have 
been  ill  inspired:  public  opinion,  as  represented  by  my 
reviewers,  would  turn  and  rend  me.  That  would  be 
an  example  of  crowd-intolerance,  of  which  a  word  must 
now  be  said. 

Conventional  people,  who  are  the  commonest  voice 
used  by  public  opinion,  always  distrust  the  unconven- 
tional man  and  look  upon  him  with  suspicion.  The 
reason  is  because  a  person  who  sets  minor  conventions 
at  naught  seems  to  them  likely  to  treat  in  the  same  easy 
fashion  those  higher  conventions  on  which  rests  Society 
—  the  organised  crowd.  Such  a  revolted  individual, 
outside  of  and  perhaps  opposed  to  the  organised  crowd, 
may  become  the  centre  of  a  new  and  hostile  crowd  by 
which  the  existence  of  the  crowd  in  possession  may  be 
imperilled.  The  instinct  of  self-preservation  is  thus  also 
one  of  the  factors  in  the  development  of  intolerance,  for 
a  crowd's  most  potent  dread  is  the  fear  of  annihilation, 
and  it  can  only  be  annihilated  when  it  is  supplanted  by 
another  crowd.     As  every  crowd  has  small  beginnings 

81 


The   Crowd   in    Peace   and   War 

and  gathers  in  the  first  instance  around  a  freely  thinking 
individual  as  its  nucleus,  the  instinct  of  self-preservation 
makes  the  members  of  every  crowd  fear,  and  therefore 
tend  to  hate,  any  individual  who  differs  from  them. 
Bees  not  only  kill  stranger  bees  from  another  hive,  but 
also  individuals  from  their  own  hive  who  have  strayed 
away  for  some  days  and  then  find  a  belated  way  back. 
Tribes  of  low  development  in  the  Amazon  forests  act 
in  the  same  manner.  They  kill  every  Indian  belonging 
to  another  tribe  who  comes  in  their  way;  and  if  one  of 
their  own  tribe  is  absent  for  six  months  or  more  they 
kill  him  likewise  on  his  return.  Rubber  agents  are  aware 
of  this  fact  and  used  to  avail  themselves  of  it  to  enlist 
rubber  gatherers.  They  had  only  to  catch  an  Indian  and 
keep  him  away  from  his  tribe  for  about  that  length  of 
time  and  he  inevitably  became  their  man  for  life.  If 
he  ran  away  from  them  there  was  nowhere  for  him  to  go; 
his  old  tribe  would  kill  him  and  so  would  the  members 
of  any  other  tribe.  Their  tribal  instinct  of  self-preserva- 
tion took  that  form. 

Intolerance  finds  its  classic  exemplification  in  religious 
bodies,  and  those  not  of  one  age  or  religion  but  of  all 
ages  and  all  religions.  Witness,  as  an  ancient  example, 
the  destruction  with  which  the  priesthood  of  Thebes 
overwhelmed  the  reforms  and  the  memory  of  the  first 
great  monotheist,  the  Pharaoh  Amenhotep  IV.  Medi- 
aeval bigots  were  not  more  thorough.  Whenever  a  par- 
ticular kind  of  crowd  manifests  in  successive  generations 
over  a  long  period  a  similar  imperfection,  the  reason  is  to 
be  sought  not  in  some  vice  of  the  people  involved,  but  in 
the  nature  of  the  crowd  itself,  that  is  to  say  in  the  nature 

82 


Crowd- Instincts 

of  things.  Religious  intolerance  is  involved  in  the  nature 
of  a  religious  crowd.  Though  all  crowds  are  generated  and 
united  by  emotion,  they  are  organised  and  used  by  lead- 
ers to  carry  out  some  purpose  intellectually  conceived; 
but  a  religious  crowd  is  formed  about  religious  emotion 
and  has  no  other  end  than  to  propagate  and  maintain  that 
emotion.  The  emotion  may  be  capable  of  intellectual 
analysis  and  its  character  or  concomitant  beliefs  may  be 
intellectually  defined  as  dogmas,  but  the  fact  remains 
that  behind  all  the  dogmas,  rituals,  and  organisations  of 
any  church  there  lies  finally  not  an  intellectual  conception 
but  a  religious  emotion.  Hence  of  all  crowds  the  religious 
are  the  most  emotional. 

Further,  seeing  that  of  all  human  qualities  the  emo- 
tions are  the  most  evanescent,  the  most  liable  to  vary, 
and  that  crowds  by  their  very  nature  must  be  fickle,  it 
follows  that  the  instinct  of  self-preservation  in  a  religious 
crowd  is  more  alert  than  in  any  other,  because  the  emo- 
tion that  holds  such  a  crowd  together  is  of  an  exceptionally 
unstable  character.  When  we  come  to  the  consideration 
of  the  relation  of  crowds  to  religion  we  shall  have  to  con- 
sider the  means  taken  by  religious  bodies  to  give  stability 
to  their  structure;  at  present  it  suffices  to  note  the  fact  of 
this  instability.  In  no  category  of  human  crowdship  is 
it  so  easy  to  start  a  new  group,  first  as  a  subdivision  of  an 
older  crowd,  presently  as  an  independent  body.  All 
crowds  are  rather  easy  to  split,  but  none  so  easy  as  reli- 
gious crowds.  The  semi-religious  character  of  modern 
socialistic  movements  is  indicated  by  the  tendency  of 
socialistic  organisations  to  subdivide.  A  new  form  of 
religious  emotion  may  arise  anywhere  and  at  any  time. 

83 


The   Crowd   in    Peace   and   War 

A  single  orator  suffices  to  give  it  vogue.  Thus  every 
church  is  always  in  fear  of  innovators.  The  smallest 
movement  may  grow  with  incredible  rapidity  and  become 
a  danger  to  the  persistence  of  the  body  within  which  it 
arose.  No  prophet  of  a  new  emotion  can  be  regarded  as 
insignificant  even  at  the  start.  A  camel-driver  made 
Islam,  and  the  world  trembled.  Intolerance  therefore, 
that  is  to  say  hatred  of  any  divergence  from  a  settled 
religious  form,  is  almost  a  necessary  quality  in  every 
religious  body.  A  new  form  of  religion,  after  a  longer 
or  shorter  period  of  growth,  becomes  defined  as 
clearly  as  its  professors  can  define  it,  and  then  resists 
with  all  the  power  it  can  control  every  attempt  to 
alter  its  definitions  or  transform  their  scope,  not  that 
its  individual  members  care  about  the  words,  or  even 
for  the  most  part  understand  them,  but  because  the 
permanence  of  the  crowd  is  involved  in  the  maintenance 
of  its  formulas. 

The  instinct  of  every  crowd  is  to  resent  freedom  of  speech 
in  any  sense  opposed  to  its  own  views,  because  it  fears 
that  an  opposed  speaker  may  be  able,  by  the  possession 
of  an  orator's  hypnotic  power,  to  create  a  crowd  adverse 
to  it.  A  crowd  does  not  fear  its  own  conversion.  What 
it  dreads  is  the  creation  of  a  beast  like  itself  and  inimical 
to  it.  Free  individuals,  that  is  to  say  individuals  who  are 
not  mere  crowd-units,  delight  in  free  speech,  for  others 
as  for  themselves,  and  like  to  hear  views  explained  and 
enforced  which  are  not  their  own.  To  such  men  the  dis- 
cussion of  divergent  opinions  is  the  very  salt  of  human  in- 
tercourse. But  no  crowd  can  preserve  such  an  attitude 
towards  what  it  calls  heresy.     The  wound  a  crowd  fears 

84 


Crowd-Instincts 

is  detachment  of  its  constituent  items  and  their  absorp- 
tion in  another  crowd.  It  in  fact  fears  this  worse  than 
their  death.  If  an  adherent  is  killed  the  loss  is  "minus 
one";  whereas  if  he  is  not  only  taken  away  but  added  to 
another  crowd  the  loss  is  "minus  two."  Thus  conversion 
is  twice  as  deadly  as  death,  just  as  desertion  to  the  enemy 
is,  in  the  case  of  an  army.  Indeed  conversion  is  more 
than  twice  as  deadly  as  death,  because  a  crowd  may  even 
profit  by  the  self-sacrificing  death  of  one  of  its  members. 
"The  blood  of  martyrs  is  the  seed  of  the  Church."  Hence 
the  desire  to  manufacture  martyrs,  when  circumstances 
do  not  happen  to  produce  them,  is  an  expression  of  the 
self-same  crowd  characteristics  as  intolerance,  but  acting 
in  another  direction.  Admitting  all  the  good  qualities 
possessed  by  crowds,  and  recognising  how  necessary  and 
efficient  they  have  been  in  the  development  of  civilisation 
and  humanity,  we  are  not  called  upon  to  be  blind  to  their 
many  essential  defects,  and  their  instinct  of  self-preser- 
vation is  the  parent  of  some  of  the  worst  of  these.  Rec- 
ognition that  such  must  be  the  case  has  led  to  a  great  deal 
of  rather  indiscriminate  abuse  of  crowds,  whereof  let  the 
following  citation  from  Hazlitt  ("Table  Talk,"  p.  130) 
serve  as  an  example:  — 

"There  is  not  a  more  mean,  stupid,  dastardly,  pitiful, 
"selfish,  spiteful,  envious,  ungrateful  animal  than  the 
"Public.  It  is  the  greatest  of  cowards,  for  it  is  afraid  of 
"itself.  From  its  unwieldy,  overgrown  dimensions,  it 
"dreads  the  least  opposition  to  it,  and  shakes  like  isinglass 
"at  the  touch  of  a  finger.  It  starts  at  its  own  shadow, 
"like  the  man  in  the  Hartz  Mountains,  and  trembles  at 
"the  mention  of  its  own  name.     It  has  a  lion's  mouth, 

85 


The   Crowd  in   Peace  and   War 

"the  heart  of  a  hare,  with  ears  erect  and  sleepless  eyes. 
"It  stands  'listening  its  fears.'  " 

If  there  were  not  much  to  be  said  on  the  other  side  the 
case  for  the  Crowd  would  indeed  be  a  bad  one,  and  social 
disorganisation  should  be  the  aim  of  every  wise  individual; 
wise  men,  however,  are  not  often  to  be  found  labouring 
for  that. 

The  self-preservative  instinct  of  a  crowd  is  manifested 
in  countless  other  ways,  which  the  reader  can  easily  observe 
for  himself.  It  will  suffice  if  I  cite  one  more.  It  is  this 
instinct,  curiously  enough,  which  at  our  present  stage  of 
civilisation  is  the  great  impediment  to  the  Eugenics  propa- 
ganda. The  purpose  of  Eugenics  is  of  course  to  make  the 
stuff  of  a  people  stronger  and  the  crowd  of  them  therefore 
more  efficient;  but  at  present  you  cannot  get  the  public 
to  think  so.  What  the  public,  like  any  other  crowd, 
instinctively  dreads  is  loss  of  membership,  that  is  to  say 
the  untimely  death  of  its  members  unless  they  give  their 
lives  for  it.  An  executed  murderer  does  in  fact  part  with 
his  life  for  the  crowd  as  completely  as  a  soldier  slain  on 
the  battle-field,  but  no  crowd  will  realise  this.  It  is  in 
response  to  this  instinct  of  the  public  that  so  much  trouble 
is  taken  to  save  the  lives  of  weakly  infants  and  to  keep 
alive  the  unfit  of  all  kinds.  This  instinct  inspires  the 
"cockering-up"  of  the  imbecile,  the  scrofulous,  the  con- 
sumptive, the  violent  criminal,  the  insane,  and  the  conse- 
quent continued  propagation  of  the  unfit.  Nature  provides 
for  the  extinction  of  such  by  disease,  malnutrition,  poverty, 
and  the  like  disqualifications.  But  the  crowd,  vaguely 
desirous  of  keeping  up  its  numbers,  fights  this  tendency  of 

nature,  not  at  all  in  the  interest  of  the  individual,  but 

86 


Crowd-Instincts 

through  an  emotional  misconception  of  its  own  interests. 
Of  course  the  time  may  come  when  public  emotion  may  be 
directed  in  another  direction  through  the  compelling 
influence  of  clear-sighted  individuals.  It  is  reason  and 
science  only,  at  present,  that  perceive  the  excellent  results 
which  Eugenic  provisions  could  produce,  but  reasoning 
will  never  put  them  in  force.  Public  opinion  is  not  formed 
by  reason  but  by  emotion.  Eugenists  must  quit  their 
laboratories  and  statistical  bureaus,  must  go  forth  into 
the  public  area,  and  evoke  the  passions  of  men  on  their 
side  before  they  can  accomplish  any  practical  result. 
They  will  succeed  in  proportion  as  they  enlist  on  their 
side  the  crowd-instinct  for  self-preservation  and  expan- 
sion. Kindle  in  the  crowd  the  desire  to  be  stronger 
and  to  contain  more  long-lived  units;  make  it  feel  that 
this  can  be  accomplished  by  working  along  certain  lines, 
and  the  emotion  of  the  crowd  will  force  that  work  along 
without  any  sort  of  regard  for  the  interests  and  prejudices 
of  individuals.  Only  crowd-emotion  can  bring  this  about, 
not  scientific  reasoning,  be  it  never  so  conclusive  to  the 
small  minority  who  are  capable  of  understanding  it. 


87 


CHAPTER  VI 
CROWD-COMPELLERS 

WE  have  thus  far  only  considered  the  human  indi- 
vidual as  a  crowd-unit  or  as  a  man  keeping  his 
individuality  as  pure  and  himself  as  independent 
as  possible  from  all  crowd-influence.  But  a  man  may  have 
another  and  far  more  important  relation  to  a  crowd:  he 
may  be  its  leader.  What  then  are  the  conditions  of 
leadership?  What  is  the  nature  of  the  relations  between 
the  leader  and  the  crowd  he  leads?  The  life  of  any  kind 
of  crowd-leader  is  what  we  call  "public  life."  It  is  life  led 
under  the  eye  of  the  crowd,  conformably  (so  far  as  it  is 
visible)  to  crowd-conventions,  crowd-morals,  crowd-stand- 
ards, and  employing  crowd-language.  In  return  for  these 
limitations  the  leader  enjoys  a  greater  or  less  privilege  of 
controlling  crowd-action  and  wielding  crowd-power,  or  at 
least  of  appearing  to  do  so  and  of  shining  with  a  corres- 
ponding prestige.  To  live  in  the  crowd-atmosphere,  to 
play  with  the  crowd-beast  as  a  lion-tamer  with  lions,  to 
partake  of  the  mighty  crowd-life,  feel  its  throb,  its  power, 
its  vaster  vitality  —  such  are  the  temptations  that  take 
some  tolerably  decent  individuals  into  the  bondage  of 
public  life.  It  is  said  that  they  have  a  thirst  for  power, 
but  that  is  an  insufficient  description.  Money  is  like- 
wise power,  which  an  individual  may  wield  without  help 
from  any  crowd.     Crowd-power  wielded  by  an  individual 

88 


Crowd-Compellers 

is  of  another  sort  and  may  be,  often  is,  combined  with 
relative  individual  poverty  and  weakness,  though  the 
poverty  has  a  way  of  passing  off  pretty  quickly!  A 
wealthy  individual  can  do  within  limits  what  he  pleases; 
a  public  man  can  only  do  what  he  can  persuade  or  compel 
his  crowd  to  please. 

Crowd-leaders  fall  into  one  of  three  categories:  the 
crowd-compeller,  the  crowd-exponent,  and  the  crowd- 
representative.  Let  us  consider  these  three  types  in  suc- 
cession. 

The  crowd-compeller  is  a  type  that  will  be  recognised 
without  difficulty.  Such  in  recent  days  was  Napoleon, 
such  Disraeli.  Such  were  the  great  conquerors  of  the 
past — Alexander,  Csesar,  Charlemagne.  Such  the  builders 
of  empires,  the  initiators  of  widespread  popular  movements. 
These  are  the  men  who  conceive  a  great  idea  or  far-reach- 
ing plan,  who  fashion  and  master  a  crowd  big  enough  to 
give  effect  to  it,  and  who  drive  the  crowd  to  do  the  work 
they  determine  that  it  shall  do.  Disraeli,  in  "  Coningsby," 
thus  described  such  a  man  as  "a  primordial  and  creative 
"mind,  one  that  will  say  to  his  fellows,  'Behold,  God  has 
"'given  me  thought;  I  have  discovered  truth;  and  you 
'"shall  believe.'  "  Observe  how  naturally  inspiration 
from  Heaven  is  claimed  for  these.  They  are  likewise 
frequently  credited  with  the  gift  of  prophecy.  Thus 
Mazzini,  in  pointing  out  the  difference  between  the  types 
which  I  name  the  crowd-compeller  and  the  crowd-exponent, 
describes  the  former  as  "men  of  the  mighty  subjective 
"race,  who  stamp  the  impress  of  their  own  individuality 
" — like  conquerors  —  both  upon  the  actual  world  and 
"upon  the  world  of  their  own  creation,  and  derive  the  life 

89 


The   Crowd   in    Peace   and   War 

"they  make  manifest  in  their  works,  either  from  the  life 
"within  themselves,  or  from  that  life  of  the  future  which, 
"prophet-like,  they  foresee.  The  great  men  of  the  second 
"category  reflect  the  images  of  the  external  world  like  a 
"tranquil  lake,  and,  as  it  were,  canal  their  own  individu- 
"ality  to  identify  their  soul  successively  with  each  of  the 
"objects  that  pass  across  the  surface.  Each  are  equally 
"powerful:  the  last  more  especially  call  for  our  admira- 
"tion;  the  first  more  especially  awaken  our  affection.'^ 

Foresight  is  a  necessary  quality  for  a  crowd-compeller. 
Poets,  scholars  and  the  like,  even  the  greatest,  do  not  need 
it.  But  all  business,  all  politics,  all  doing  depends  on  fore- 
seeing difficulties  and  providing  against  them.  Every 
crowd-leader  needs  foresight,  but  the  foresight  of  the 
crowd-compeller  is  not  as  to  what  will  happen  but  as  to 
what  he  can  cause  to  happen  with  the  human  organism 
under  his  hypnotic  control.  Foresight,  however,  under- 
standing of  men,  quick  insight,  capacity  for  right  decision, 
great  intellectual  qualities  of  many  kinds  —  all  these 
together  do  not  suffice  to  make  a  crowd-compeller,  and 
many  of  the  great  ones  have  been  conspicuously  lacking 
in  some  such  capacities.  The  essential  quality  without 
which  all  the  rest  profit  nothing  is  what  is  called  hypnotic 
force.  Thus  it  was  said  of  Lord  Stratford  de  Redcliffe, 
when  he  went  as  Ambassador  to  Turkey,  that  though  he 
was  "clothed  with  little  authority,  except  what  he  could 
"draw  from  the  resources  of  his  own  mind  and  from  the 
"strength  of  his  own  wilful  nature,  yet  it  was  presently  seen 
"that  those  who  were  near  him  fell  under  his  dominion, 
"and  did  as  he  bade  them,  and  that  the  circle  of  deference 
"to  his  will  was  always  increasing  around  him." 

90 


Crowd-Compellers 

It  is  seldom  that  a  man  can  make  himself  so  effective 
to  influence  the  course  of  events  and  the  fate  of  nations  as 
this  great  diplomatist  actually  did  for  better  or  worse,  by 
the  mere  impress  of  his  will  upon  individuals  with  whom 
he  came  personally  into  contact.  Normally  the  crowd- 
compeller  is  one  who  comes  into  direct  contact  with  a  crowd 
and  masters  it  by  the  power  of  oratory,  or  at  any  rate 
by  such  masterful  speech  as  attains  the  effect  usually 
ascribed  to  oratory. 

There  is  indeed  a  kind  of  crowd  compulsion  of  a  low 
order  commonly  well  exemplified  in  revival  meetings. 
Here,  for  instance,  is  a  specimen  as  reported  in  the  New 
Orleans  "Times-Democrat,"  describing  the  efficiency  of  a 
negro  preacher,  Hamp  Scott  by  name.  The  meeting  had 
been  dull,  and  the  reporter  was  about  to  make  his  escape, 
"when  an  old  cotton-headed  negro  started  a  camp-meet- 
"ing  hymn.  He  sang  in  a  wailing  minor  key  that  went 
"straight  to  the  nerves,  and  before  he  got  through  with 
"the  first  stanza,  I  could  feel  the  tension  in  the  atmos- 
"phere.  When  he  finally  ceased  Scott  himself  jumped 
"up  and  began  to  intone  another  hymn  —  a  typical  negro 
"composition,  with  the  refrain:  — 

"  'An  de  sinner  is  a  burnin'  in  de  pit ! ' 

"He  droned  each  verse  in  a  thrilling  undertone  that  was 
"almost  a  whisper,  everybody  joining,  but  when  he  came 
"to  the  climax  he  suddenly  straightened  up  and  rolled 
"out  the  refrain  like  a  clap  of  thunder.  The  effect  was 
"electrical,  and  in  five  minutes  half  the  congregation  was 
"on  the  verge  of  hysterics.  Then  followed  the  most 
"remarkable  part  of  the  whole  performance.  As  the 
"hymn  died  down  Scott  set  up  a  sort  of  chant.     As  nearly 

91 


The   Crowd   in    Peace   and   War 

"as  I  could  make  out  he  simply  repeated  the  words  'Oh! 
"  'Lawd!  Oh-h-h!'  at  the  same  time  swaying  his  body 
"back  and  forth;  but  all  the  negroes  took  it  up  and  the 
"monotonous  reiteration  had  a  strange  mournful  cadence 
"that  reminded  me  somehow  of  the  breaking  of  waves  at 
"sea.  Whether  it  was  some  peculiar  quality  in  the  voice 
"of  the  leader,  or  the  weird  surroundings,  or  mere  cumu- 
"lative  excitement,  I  can't  say;  but  the  chant  soon  had 
"everybody  under  its  spell.  Some  of  the  darkies  fell  back, 
"staring  and  rigid,  like  cataleptics,  and  others  writhed  on 
"the  floor,  foaming  at  the  mouth  and  tearing  at  their 
"clothes.  Still  others  wept  and  shouted,  and  all  the 
"while  the  chant  continued,  rising  and  falling  like  the  wind 
"in  the  chimney." 

This  exhibition  of  hypnotic  force  exercised  by  an  indi- 
vidual over  a  crowd  is  evidently  of  a  low  order,  but  I  will 
here  cite  an  example  of  a  not  dissimilar  phenomenon  in 
which  a  very  different  class  of  persons  was  concerned.  It  is 
cited  from  the  unpublished  Journal  de  Piffoel.1  The 
occasion  in  question  was  a  meeting  of  Polish  exiles  which 
was  held  on  Christmas  Eve,  1840,  in  honor  of  the  fete-day 
of  Mickiewicz.  Slowacki  had  recited  some  verses  in 
honor  of  the  poet,  whereupon  "le  sombre  Mickiewicz" 
arose  and  improvised  a  reply. 

"Personne  ne  peut  dire  exactement  ce  qui  s'est  passe; 
"de  tous  ceux  qui  etaient  la  chacun  en  a  garde  un  souvenir 
"different:  les  uns  disent  qu'il  a  parle  cinq  minutes,  les 
"autres,  disent  une  heure.  II  est  certain  qu'il  leur  a  si 
"bien  parle,  et  qu'il  a  dit  de  si  belles  choses,  qu'ils  sont  tous 

1  Printed  in-W.  Karenine:  "George  Sand,  sa  vie  et  ses  ceuvres": 
Paris,  1912,  p.  201. 

92 


Crowd-Compellers 

"tombes  dans  une  sorte  de  delire.  On  n'entendait  que 
"cris  et  sanglots,  plusieurs  ont  eu  des  attaques  de  nerfs, 
"d'autres  n'ont  pu  dormir  le  nuit.  Le  comte  Plater,  en 
"rentrant  chez  lui,  etait  dans  un  etat  d'exaltation,  si 
"etrange  que  sa  femme  l'a  cru  fouet  s'est  fort  epouvantee. 
"Mais  pendant  qu'il  lui  racontait  comme  il  pouvait  non 
"pas  l'improvisation  de  Mickiewicz  (personne  n'a  pu 
"en  redire  un  mot),  mais  l'effet  de  sa  parole  sur  ses  audi- 
"  teurs,  la  comtesse  Plater  est  tombee  dans  le  meme  etat  que 
"son  mari  et  s'est  mise  a  pleurer,  a  prier  et  a  divaguer. 
"Les  voila  tous  convaincus  qu'il  y  a  dans  ce  grand  homme 
"quelque  chose  de  surhumain,  qu'il  est  inspire  a  la  mani- 
"ere  des  prophetes,  et  leur  superstition  est  si  grande  qu'un 
"de  ces  matins  ils  pourraient  bien  en  faire  un  dieu." 

This  kind  of  ecstatic  power  is  perhaps  possessed  by  rela- 
tively few  and  may  not  be  very  wholesome,  but  the  results 
produced  by  it  are  certainly  remarkable,  and  not  always 
evil.  Of  a  higher  kind  is  the  power  which  some  possess 
not  so  much  of  carrying  along  with  them  in  their  own 
enthusiasm  an  assemblage  of  already  sympathetic  or  at 
least  of  neutral  persons,  but  of  mastering  and  compelling 
to  follow  them  an  assemblage  openly  and  consciously 
hostile,  and  of  making  it  cheer  with  enthusiasm  opinions 
which  were  displeasing  to  the  people  before  the  speaker 
obtained  dominion  over  them.  I  have  before  me  the  report 
of  a  public  meeting,  unfortunately  too  long  for  quotation 
and  impossible  effectively  to  abridge,  which  well  exempli- 
fies this  kind  of  authority.  The  speaker  was  not  an  orator, 
in  the  ordinary  acceptation  of  the  term.  He  was  a  public 
man  of  much  force  of  character,  whose  course  of  action  had 
been  objectionable  to  a  large  body  of  the  organised  work- 

93 


The   Crowd  in   Peace   and  War 

men  of  a  great  city.  He  had  the  courage  to  call  a  meeting 
of  his  critics,  which  he  addressed  at  length.  The  meeting 
was  at  first  noisy  and  openly  hostile  to  him.  My  news- 
paper report  says  that  "verbal  hot  shot"  was  fired  at  him 
from  all  sides  of  the  hall.  He  began  by  taking  up  a  manly 
and  courageous  attitude.  He  adopted  great  plainness  of 
speech.  His  instinct  rather  than  any  plan  led  him  to  put 
forward  first  certain  broad  statements  on  which  he  and 
the  crowd  were  certainly  agreed.  They  of  course  began 
to  cheer.  Gradually  he  thus  got  hold  of  them,  but  it  was 
half  an  hour  before  his  hold  was  secure.  Then  he  insinu- 
ated rather  than  stated  some  of  the  points  of  view  to 
which  they  had  been  opposed,  but  did  not  dwell  on  them 
and  quickly  returned  to  matters  of  general  human  agree- 
ment. When  he  had  them  well  in  hand  and  all  their 
sympathies  were  captured  he  explained  his  policy  and  they 
accepted  it  with  cheers  and  sent  him  away  after  two  hours* 
speech,  covered  with  such  glory  and  honour  as  was  in  their 
power  to  bestow.  Public  men  who  can  accomplish  such  a 
result  possess  the  elements  of  crowd-compelling  power. 
More  qualities  are  needed,  but  that  quality  is  essential. 

Once  I  had  occasion  to  watch  the  rapid  and  masterful 
effect  of  the  intervention  of  a  single  man  at  a  critical  mo- 
ment. It  was  in  the  capital  of  a  Central  American  state 
at  a  time  of  revolution.  The  city  was  being  besieged,  or 
rather  attacked  from  one  side,  and  the  attacking  force 
had  had  things  their  own  way  and  were  in  possession  of 
the  outskirts  of  the  city.  Everybody  expected  it  to  fall 
next  day  and  the  defending  force  was  on  the  point  of  sur- 
render. By  good  luck,  however,  the  Governor  of  the  city 
either  fell  ill  or  ran  away.     At  all  events  the  direction  of 

94 


Crowd-Compellers 

affairs  passed  into  the  hands  of  the  deputy-governor.  No 
sooner  was  he  in  control  than  the  whole  atmosphere  of  the 
city  changed  as  though  by  magic.  The  fighting  men  be- 
came full  of  hope,  the  citizens  lost  their  terrors.  Trenches 
were  dug  in  the  night,  breastworks  of  sacks  filled  with 
earth  were  raised.  Every  one  —  Spaniard,  nigger,  Indian, 
Chinaman,  and  European,  and  the  various  half-castes  or 
quarter-castes  of  all  five  —  worked  together.  When  the 
dawn  broke  fighting  began  again.  The  couple  of  guns 
which  had  been  fetched  by  the  rebels  —  gunners,  ammuni- 
tion and  all  —  on  contract  from  the  United  States,  were 
presently  silenced.  The  fighting  was  of  the  most  desper- 
ate character.  Out  of  5000  men  engaged  on  both  sides 
less  than  2000  were  not  killed  or  wounded  by  the  end  of 
the  day,  but  then  the  city  was  saved  and  the  rebels  were 
finally  chased  away.  The  result  was  produced  by  one 
man  who  authentically  possessed  the  crowd-compelling 
gift.  He  was  not  an  orator,  so  far  as  I  know,  but  he  was  a 
born  leader  of  men,  and  such  need  no  gift  of  oratory. 

Oratory,  of  course,  is  a  powerful  helper  in  obtaining 
crowd-control,  for,  as  Bagehot  says,  "An  orator  has  a  do- 
"  minion  over  the  critical  instant,  and  the  consequences  of 
"the  decisions  taken  during  that  instant  may  last  long 
"after  the  orator  and  the  audience  have  both  passed 
"away."  Orators,  however,  commonly  belong  to  the 
crowd-exponent  class,  and  are  no  less  moved  and  no  more 
masters  of  themselves  than  are  the  audience.  Crowd- 
compelling  orators  are  those,  "who  moving  others  are 
"themselves  as  stone." 

Such  was  Disraeli,  such  also  in  some  degree  was  Mr. 

Joseph  Chamberlain;  such  sometimes  was  Mr.  Gladstone. 

95 


The   Crowd   in    Peace   and   War 

Indeed  the  highest  type  of  crowd-compel  ler  has  not  often 
been  an  orator.  They  are  usually  silent  men.  Mr. 
Chamberlain  in  the  latter  part  of  his  ministerial  career  was 
rightly  regarded  as  the  incarnation  of  the  idea  of  British 
imperialism.  He  was  even  supposed  to  have  been  the 
inventor  of  that  idea.  As  a  matter  of  fact  he  was  nothing 
of  the  sort.  Lord  Rosebery  had  been  shaping  and  urging 
the  ideal  of  our  "wise,  tolerant,  and  unaggressive  Empire" 
while  Mr.  Chamberlain  was  a  little  Englander,  taking,  for 
instance,  a  determining  part  in  compelling  our  withdrawal 
from  the  Sudan  after  the  Gordon  catastrophe.  Both  in 
that  policy  and  in  his  later  imperialism  he  was  acting  as 
a  crowd-exponent,  voicing  the  existing  ideas  of  his  party, 
not  imposing  his  own  views  upon  them.  But  when  he 
became  a  convert  to  protection,  or  rather  when  he  threw 
off  the  control  of  Cobdenism  (to  which  he  had  submitted) 
and  reverted  openly  to  his  own  original  protective  views, 
he  was  no  longer  the  voice  of  any  formed  party,  but  be- 
came the  exponent  of  his  own  personal  opinions.  There- 
upon he  set  forth  on  a  new  career  as  crowd-compeller. 
He  had  thenceforward  to  form  his  own  crowd,  to  make  it 
obedient  to  his  will,  to  help  it  to  grow  and  attain  power, 
and  he  so  far  succeeded  that  before  long  it  had  become 
large  enough  and  strong  enough  to  capture  the  organisation 
of  the  Unionist  party  and  to  include  the  bulk  of  that  party 
within  the  limits  of  his  newly  formed  body.  From  that 
time  on,  so  long  as  Mr.  Chamberlain  remained  active  in  po- 
litical life,  the  Unionist  party  was  in  fact  a  Tariff-Reform 
body,  subject  to  his  control  and  existing  to  enable  him  to 
accomplish  the  ends  he  had  in  view.  Few  will  deny  that 
if  his  physical  health  had  been  maintained  his  party  would 

96 


Crowd-Compellers 

have  captured  a  majority  of  the  voters  and  he  would  have 
been  enabled,  in  consequence  of  the  force  of  his  own  domi- 
nant personality,  to  impose  his  will  upon  the  whole  country. 
The  crowd-compeller  does  not  listen  for  public  opinion 
that  he  may  guide  his  steps  by  it;  on  the  contrary  he  is 
more  likely  to  resemble  the  Claverhouse  of  Sir  Walter 
Scott,  whom  he  described  as  "profound  in  politics  and 
"imbued,  of  course,  with  that  disregard  for  individual 
"rights  which  its  intrigues  usually  generate."  The  crowd- 
compeller  forces  the  public  to  adopt  his  opinion;  he 
makes  that  to  be  public  opinion.  His  own  energy  of  na- 
ture impels  him  to  project  himself  upon  the  crowd,  to 
realise  himself  in  its  larger  life,  to  make  it  incorporate  him, 
to  make  his  brain  the  centre  and  originating  power  of  its 
brainless  body.  Nor  is  there  any  limit  to  the  human 
area  within  which  he  desires  to  reign.  Instinct  impels 
him  to  impregnate  everybody  with  his  views.  He  must 
go  forward  conquering  and  to  conquer  as  long  as  his 
own  individual  life  lasts.  Nor  does  that  suffice  him,  but 
he  must,  as  far  as  he  can,  so  organise  the  crowd  which  he 
forms  as  to  make  it  incorporate  his  policy  and  continue  to 
pursue  it  long  after  his  own  physical  presence  has  vanished. 
It  is  thus  that  in  the  past  men  have  first  made  themselves 
kings,  and  then  have  founded  dynasties,  which  lasted  as 
long  as  the  original  impulse  continued,  or  till  some  great 
successor  arose  to  infuse  new  life  into  the  old  ideal  or 
replace  it  by  a  new  one.  The  business  of  the  historian, 
therefore,  is  not  merely  to  trace  the  ideal  or  crowd-mind 
from  age  to  age  operating  on  the  individual,  but  to  observe 
the  individual  mind  expressed  in  the  crowd.  Public 
opinion  is  never  the  opinion  of  the  average  man,  for  there 

97 


The   Crowd  in   Peace   and  War 

exists  no  such  person.  It  is  the  opinion  or  group  of  opin- 
ions imposed  upon  the  public  by  a  succession  of  thinkers. 
The  character  of  the  public  in  any  age  and  country  is 
determined  by  that  of  existing  and  past  thinkers,  who  have 
operated  on  the  crowd  and  obtained  control  over  it.  The 
value  of  public  opinion  is  thus  to  be  measured  by  the 
quality  of  the  leaders  who  control  or  have  controlled  it. 
To  measure  the  value  of  German  public  opinion  in  1914 
we  have  only  to  name  the  men  whose  opinions  it  voiced 
—  Treitschke,  Nietzsche,  Bernhardi,  the  Emperor  Wil- 
liam II.  It  is  not  the  nation  we  must  indict,  but  the 
compellers  who  dominated  it.  All  nations  are  natural 
born  fools! 

The  manifestation  of  great  crowd-compellers  on  the 
political  world-stage  is  a  rare  phenomenon,  such  giants 
requiring  not  merely  capacity  but  opportunity.  A  man's 
gifts  and  powers  of  insight  must  match  his  day.  If  the 
French  Revolution  had  not  gone  before  him  Napoleon 
might  have  remained  obscure.  In  our  own  time  the 
number  of  great  crowd-compellers,  such  as  Bismarck  and 
Cavour,  have  been  few  indeed.  Cecil  Rhodes  did  not 
rise  to  the  full  height  of  a  career.  We  may  suspect  the 
existence  of  crowd-compelling  powers  of  high  degree  in 
Lord  Kitchener,  but  the  fact,  if  it  be  a  fact,  will  only  be 
fully  revealed  in  process  of  time.  That  he  was  called  for 
imperatively  at  a  critical  moment  by  the  national  voice 
is  a  strong  indication  that  the  people  recognised  in  him 
above  all  others  the  leader  of  whom  they  were  in  need, 
and  such  recognition  is  often  sound  insight. 

But  the  crowd-compelling  power  on  a  smaller  scale  is, 
in  England  at  any  rate,  not  a  very  rare  quality.     It  is 


Crowd-Compellers 

the  power  to  lead  men,  a  priceless  heritage  of  certain  classes 
in  this  country,  where  it  is  probably  more  richly  possessed 
than  in  any  other.  This  power  is  essentially  hereditary, 
though  developed  by  education.  Unless  the  germ  of  it 
is  in  a  man  at  his  birth  it  can  never  be  implanted  in  him. 
No  amount  of  free  education,  of  open  competitive  exami- 
nations, of  selection  by  vote  or  any  other  agency,  will 
enable  individuals  to  become  leaders  of  men  unless  they 
are  born  so  to  be.  That  is  why  good  officers  seldom  rise 
from  the  ranks,  unless  the  right  type  of  man  has  first 
been  compelled  by  circumstances  to  enter  them.  India 
was  conquered  and  is  held  by  the  British  subaltern,  who 
as  naturally  leads  the  Indian  soldier  as  a  sheep-dog  controls 
a  flock.  We  do  in  fact  in  England  breed  and  train  such  a 
class  for  our  army,  navy,  and  civil  service,  but  unfortu- 
nately not  for  politics.  We  select  politicians  by  a  kind  of 
competitive  examination  in  stump-speaking,  with  results 
extraordinary. 

I  was  once  returning  from  Jamaica  on  a  Royal  Mail 
steamship,  and  there  was  a  young  British  officer  among 
the  passengers.  One  day  the  amusements'  committee 
arranged  for  sports,  and  one  of  the  incidents  was  to  be  a 
tug-of-war.  It  was  amusing  to  watch  the  confusion 
attending  the  formation  of  the  string  of  competitors,  the 
false  starts  at  pulling,  and  other  little  misfires.  When 
things  were  at  their  worst  up  came  the  young  subaltern 
and  took  the  business  in  hand.  Immediately  all  the  com- 
petitors became  orderly;  they  gladly  did  exactly  what  he 
bade  them.  His  orders  were  brief  and  clear  and  the  sum- 
mons to  begin  pulling  came  from  his  mouth  like  a  pistol- 
shot.     If  it  had  been  his  own  men  he  was  ordering,  the 

99 


The   Crowd  in    Peace   and  War 

instinctive  obedience  would  have  been  self -explained;  but 
it  was  a  mere  casual  crowd  of  passenger-idlers.  Yet  they 
obeyed  him  instantly  and  instinctively  because  he  pos- 
sessed by  nature  the  power  to  command,  which  had  also 
been  developed  in  him  by  some  practice.  This  power  of 
command,  accompanied  as  it  always  is  by  capacity  for 
individual  initiative  when  required,  is  the  most  valuable 
attribute  of  the  upper  class  in  any  nation.  Upon  it,  far 
more  than  upon  the  individual  capacity  of  working  men, 
the  success  of  a  nation  depends,  not  merely  in  war  but  in 
all  categories  of  activity,  and  not  least  in  manufacture  and 
commerce.  A  good  leader  can  get  better  results  out  of 
second-rate  human  material  than  a  bad  leader  out  of  a 
better  class,  for  behind  skill  and  knowledge,  giving  them 
most  of  their  efficiency,  lie  spirit  and  the  power  of  co-ordi- 
nation, and  these  belong  not  to  the  hands  but  to  the  brain 
of  a  leader.  That  nation  is  and  always  must  be  greatest 
in  which  the  power  of  leadership  is  commonest,  best 
acknowledged,  and  most  employed. 


100 


CHAPTER  VII 
CROWD-EXPONENTS 

THE  crowd-compeller,  as  we  have  thus  seen,  is  the 
type  of  man  who  produces  a  movement  and 
either  forms  or  gives  a  new  direction  to  a  nation, 
a  party,  or  any  sort  of  crowd.  But  when  the  move- 
ment is  once  strong  and  tending  towards  the  attain- 
ment of  its  object,  or  has  attained  it,  that  movement  in 
its  turn,  sometimes  during  the  lifetime  of  its  originator, 
oftenest  after  his  death,  produces  new  leaders,  who  have 
not  made  it  but  who  have  been  made  by  it,  and  these  men 
are  crowd-exponents.  They  are  often  of  a  type  that 
would  have  horrified  the  crowd-compeller  to  whose  activ- 
ity they  in  fact  owe  their  existence.  The  crowd-exponent 
is  the  man  who  feels  by  sympathetic  insight  and  mere 
sensitiveness  of  nature  as  the  crowd  feels  or  is  going  to 
feel,  and  who  expresses  in  clear  language  the  emotion  of 
the  dumb  organism.  For  all  the  ideas  of  a  crowd  are 
necessarily  of  a  vague  emotional  sort  and  can  only  be 
expressed  by  them  in  the  form  of  shouts  or  actions  of 
approval  or  dissent.  The  crowd  loves  anyone  who  will 
express  its  ideas  —  "just  what  we've  been  thinking, — 
"that's  true  —  go  it,  old  man!  —  you're  right!"  Such 
are  the  normal  responses  of  a  crowd  to  its  momentarily 
fittest  exponent.  He  may  be  a  speaker,  or  a  writer,  or 
a  group  of  newspaper  writers  —  but  whatever  he  is,  he 

101 


The   Crowd   in    Peace   and   War 

is  the  voice  of  the  crowd  and  his  utterance  is  really  theirs. 
He  in  fact  borrows  his  thunder  from  them  and  gives  back 
to  them  .what  he  has  himself  received  from  them. 

Hence  the  chief  quality  of  a  crowd-exponent  is  sensi- 
tiveness, and  the  faculty  he  most  needs  is  the  power  of 
speech.  He  is  by  nature  akin  to  an  artist;  his  is  the 
stuff  of  which  poets  are  made.  Crowd-enthusiasm  is 
the  atmosphere  in  which  he  lives  and  breathes  and  has 
his  being.  It  is  not  surprising,  therefore,  that  he  should 
often  be  an  orator,  nor  that  most  entrancing  orators 
should  be  of  his  type.  His  business  and  joy  is  not  to  think 
out  the  solution  of  some  difficult  social  problem  in  the 
privacy  of  his  study,  and  then  go  forth  and  proclaim  a 
new  gospel  to  an  unwilling  world.  He  waits  till  that  work 
has  been  done  and  the  crowd  has  already  taken  form; 
then  he  plunges  into  the  thick  of  it  and  says  with  eloquence, 
power,  and  enthusiasm  that  which  the  folk  about  him 
are  dimly  and  vaguely  feeling.  Whereupon  they  raise 
him  aloft  with  loud  applause  and  worship  him  like  a  god 
because  his  voice  has  given  them  words  and  enabled  the 
crowd  to  realise  its  own  mighty,  if  vague  and  ill-defined, 
existence  and  power. 

To  the  born  crowd-exponent  the  voice  of  the  people  is 
indubitably  the  voice  of  God.  The  great  men  of  this 
sort  do  not  go  forth  to  find  out  by  laborious  research 
what  a  people  are  thinking,  and  having  discovered  it  then 
consciously  adopt  and  voice  the  public  opinion.  It  is 
only  the  little  men  who  are  always  listening  at  the  key- 
hole of  the  public  to  catch  some  secret  of  its  tones.  The 
great  men  catch  the  opinion  of  the  public  as  they  breathe 
the  air;  they  cannot  avoid  sharing  it.      It  bears  them 

102 


Crowd-Exponents 

away,  willingly  enough  on  their  part  as  a  rule,  but  whither 
it  flows  thither  they  must  tend,  even  if  that  direction  be 
the  very  opposite  of  the  line  they  had  previously  been 
pursuing  in  the  wake  of  their  own  judgment. 

The  greatest  crowd-exponent  of  the  nineteenth  cen- 
tury, in  England  at  all  events  and  perhaps  in  the  world, 
was  the  late  Mr.  Gladstone,  though  he  likewise  possessed 
crowd-compelling  authority.     I  remember  to  have  heard 
Dr.  Ellicott,  Bishop  of  Gloucester  and  Bristol,  then  a 
very  old  man,  discussing  with  a  contemporary  the  career 
of  Mr.  Gladstone  as  they  had  witnessed  it.     "I  do  not 
accuse  him,"  said  the  Bishop,  "of  having  changed  his 
views  to  suit  his  politics;  but  I  claim  that  his  views  have 
completely  changed  on  two  or  three  occasions,  so  that 
he  came  to  advocate  what  before  he  had  opposed,  and 
to  oppose  what  before  he  had  advocated;    and  I  have 
observed  that  these  changes  have  approximately  syn- 
chronised with   the  altered  interests  of  his  politics." 
Notwithstanding    these    remarkable    coincidences,    it    is 
generally  admitted,  even  by  those  who  did  not  agree  with 
Mr.  Gladstone,  that  he  was  not  the  man  to  change  his 
views  for  the  sake  of  personal  advantage,  and  that  his 
volte  face,  even  on  the  Irish  question,  was  not  made  against 
his  beliefs,  merely  in  order  to  attain  power,  but  that  he 
did  actually  and  truly  change  his   mind,  on  that   and 
other   occasions.     He   did   so,    not  intentionally  and   to 
gain  some  end,  but  because  he  could  not  help  it.     He 
felt  the  current   changing  or   about   to    change  in  the 
political  field,  and  he  instinctively  turned  towards  the 
new  ideal. 

If  he  was  thus  conscious  of  the  set  of  public  opinion, 
103 


The   Crowd  in   Peace   and   War 

he  was  even  more  keenly  conscious  of  the  mood  of  a 
crowd  in  whose  presence  he  was  actually  speaking.  Bage- 
hot  wrote  of  him:  — 

"No  one  half  guides  half  follows  the  moods  of  his  audi- 
ence more  quickly,  more  easily,  than  Mr.  Gladstone. 
There  is  a  little  playfulness  in  his  manner  which  con- 
trasts with  the  dryness  of  his  favourite  topics  and  the 
intense  gravity  of  his  earnest  character.  .  .  .    He  re- 
ceives his  premises  from  his  audience  like  a  vapour  and 
pours  out  his  conclusions  upon  them  like  a  flood.  .  .  . 
He  will  imbibe  from  one  audience  different  'vapour'  of 
premises  from  that  which  he  will  receive  from  another." 
In  these  respects  Bagehot  contrasted  him  with  Chat- 
ham and  Burke,  who  were  of  the  crowd-compelling  sort, 
but  the  passage  is  too  long  for  quotation.1     The  contrast 
between  him  and  Disraeli  was  the  most  remarkable  modern 
example  of  the  opposition  of  two  types  of  leader.     The 
one  speaking  the  voice  of  the  crowd  and  impassioned 
with    all    its  enthusiasms,  its  morals,  and  many  of  its 
prejudices;  the  other  expressing  only  so  much  of  his  own 
personal  opinions  as  he  thought  fit  to  reveal,  never  car- 
ried away  by  emotion,  nor  measuring  men  and  events  by 
the  yard-stick  of  any  crowd's  morality.     Small  wonder 
that  the  two  men  were  unsympathetic  to  one  another, 
and  that  one  of  them  could  define  the  other,  after  receiving 
from  him  a  douche  of  the  crowd's  passion,  as  a  "  sophis- 
tical rhetorician,  inebriated  with  the  exuberance  of  his 
"own  verbosity." 

Notwithstanding  Disraeli's  satire  and  the  distrust  of 
many  of  his  best  contemporaries,  it  is  now  not  disputed 

1  "Biographical  Studies,"  London,  1881,  p.  95. 
104 


Crowd- Exponents 

that  Mr.  Gladstone  was  a  really  great  man  who  lived 
and  acted  in  pursuit  of  high  ideals,  and  whose  name 
is  secure  of  repute  among  the  greatest  leaders  of 
the  nineteenth  century.  If  he  was  a  crowd-exponent 
he  was  among  the  best  and  noblest  examples  of  the 
type. 

There  are  others  of  meaner  sort  who  allow  the  emo- 
tions derived  from  the  crowd  they  are  addressing  to  run 
away  with  them  and  make  them  say  the  thing  that  on 
reflection  they  would  wish  not  to  have  said.     "Although 
the  English,"  wrote  Kinglake,  "are  by  nature  wise  in 
action,  yet,  being  vehement  and  careless  in  their  way 
of  applauding  loud  words,  they  encourage  their  orators 
and  those  also  who  address  them  in  writing,  to  be  strenu- 
ous rather  than  wise;  and  the  result  is,  that  these  teach- 
ers, trying  always  to  be  more  and  more  forcible,  grow 
blind  to  logical  dangers,  and  leap  with  headlong  joy  into 
the  pit  which  reasoners  call  the  absurdum.     Then,  and 
not  without  joyous  laughter,  reaction  begins." 
There  is  a  yet  meaner  type  of  crowd-exponent  even 
than  these  who  merely  at  times  lose  their  heads.     There 
is  the  leader  who  is  a  conscious  hypocrite  and  who  fol- 
lows, and  knowingly  follows,  the  crowd  he  pretends  to 
guide.     A  crowd,  excited  about  some  local  matter,  came 
running  down  a  street.     A  man  in  the  front  rank  stopped 
to  speak  with  a  friend  he  was  passing  on  the  pavement. 
After  a  brief  greeting  he  hurried  off,  saying,  "  I  can't  stop 
"  with  you.     I  must  run  ahead  of  the  crowd.     I  am  their 
"Leader!"     There  are  plenty  of  public  men  of  this  sort 
also,  whose  politics  consist  in  anticipating  the  direction 
in  which  the  crowd  will  move  and  then  loudly  directing 

105 


The   Crowd   in    Peace   and   War 

it  to  go  that  way.  The  unguided  crowd  is  always  a  fool, 
and  the  man  that  follows  in  front  of  it  instead  of  guiding 
it  must  therefore  often  look  like  a  fool  also. 

I  have  referred  above  to  the  German  publicists, 
Treitschke  and  the  others,  as  the  crowd-compellers  who 
impregnated  Germany  with  the  vile  political  ideals  from 
which  the  world  is  now  suffering  misery.  But  in  fact 
these  men  were  not  true  crowd-compellers  but  striking 
examples  of  a  not  uncommon  type  of  prophet.  They 
merely  caught  from  a  smaller  crowd  the  notions  which 
they  expressed  and  imposed  on  a  larger.  They  caught 
the  crowd-spirit  of  the  provincial  and  backward  Prussian 
upper  class  group  and  they  gave  it  currency  throughout 
Germany  and  imposed  it  upon  the  whole  nation  as  the 
German  ideal;  and  they  were  able  to  do  this  because 
political  developments  had  made  all  Germany  a  new  big 
political  unit  with  Prussia  at  the  top.  The  new  Ger- 
many seeking  for  some  ideal,  upon  which  the  diverse 
and  previously  discordant  parts  now  composing  the  Empire 
could  unite,  was  not  unnaturally  attracted  by  the  notions 
which  had  carried  Prussia  to  success,  and  this  abstract 
ideal  of  might,  hand  in  hand  with  the  agitation  which 
accompanied  the  formation  of  an  Imperial  navy  (the 
Army  not  being  in  structure  imperial  but  local)  effected 
the  spiritual  unification  of  Germany,  after  the  political 
unification  had  been  accomplished.  The  philosophers 
therefore,  though  appearing  to  be  crowd-compellers  and 
receiving  much  of  the  credit  and  applause  rendered  to 
such,  were  in  fact  merely  Prussian  crowd-exponents,  with 
all  the  feebleness,  the  narrowness,  the  emotional  vice  of 
their  popular  philosophy. 

106 


Crowd-Exponents 

In  our  own  day  the  crowd  has  become  more  prominent 
as  an  active  force,  because  better  organised  and  more  con- 
scious of  its  own  existence  and  power  than  ever  before,  ex- 
cept perhaps  in  the  case  of  the  Parisian  crowd  during  the 
French  Revolution.  It  follows  that  we  have  with  us  and 
can  study  whenever  we  open  our  newspapers  the  sayings 
and  behaviour  of  no  inconsiderable  number  of  very  effi- 
cient crowd-exponents.  The  crowd  is  always  quick  to 
recognise  an  efficient  exponent.  It  does  not  take  him 
long  to  attain  a  position  of  leadership,  or  apparent  leader- 
ship, provided  he  possesses  the  needful  gifts  of  sensitive- 
ness and  emotional  speech.  Thus  the  crowd  merely  as 
it  were  sniffed  around  Mr.  Winston  Churchill,  recognised 
him  immediately  as  one  of  its  own  sort,  wagged  its  tail, 
and  came  to  heel.  The  Welsh  crowd  as  readily  accepted 
Mr.  Lloyd  George  and  he  had  little  difficulty  in  obtain- 
ing corresponding  recognition  when  he  came  to  occupy 
English  platforms.  He  is,  in  fact,  the  most  prominent 
and  powerful  crowd-exponent  in  our  day.  He  is  the 
visible  and  audible  incarnation  of  popular  tendencies. 
His  emotions  respond  as  sensitively  to  those  of  a  crowd 
as  ever  a  barometer  to  changes  in  atmospheric  pressure. 
He  has  never  manifested  any  trace  of  an  individual  mind 
or  of  independent  thought.  He  has  added  nothing  to 
the  stock  of  political  ideas,  but  he  has  perfectly  voiced 
the  ideas  of  the  crowd  by  which  he  acts  and  from  which 
he  draws  both  his  emotions  and  his  power.  It  is  said 
that  in  private  life  he  is  the  most  reasonable  and  moder- 
ate of  men.  No  one  would  guess  it  from  his  public 
appearances.  As  a  solicitor  it  is  related  that  he  proved 
himself  to  be  a  master  in  bringing  opponents  to  a  com- 

107 


The   Crowd  in    Peace   and   War 

promise.  No  one  handled  angry  men  better.  Each  felt, 
and  probably  felt  truly,  that  he  had  the  sympathetic 
understanding  of  the  intermediary  negotiator.  This  was 
due  to  his  sensitively  sympathetic  nature.  The  same 
sensitive  sympathy  puts  him  in  immediate  touch  with 
the  emotions  of  a  public  meeting.  When  he  addresses 
an  audience  of  bankers  in  the  City  of  London,  he  cannot 
fail  to  catch  their  tone,  and  both  the  ideas  he  expresses 
and  the  form  in  which  he  puts  them  are  agreeable  to  his 
audience.  The  strongest  warning  ever  plainly  uttered 
to  Germany  came  from  his  lips  in  the  City  of  London, 
and  then  also  he  was  voicing  the  opinions  of  the  people 
he  was  addressing.  In  fact  it  may  be  suspected  that  the 
feeling  of  the  audience  led  him  to  state  their  case  with 
somewhat  less  restraint  than  he  might  have  used  had 
his  audience  been  colder.  For  the  same  reason  when  he 
went  down  to  Limehouse  and  held  up  Lord  Rothschild 
and  other  prominent  citizens  of  London,  no  less  patriotic 
than  himself,  to  scorn  and  ridicule,  he  was  merely  voicing 
the  ignorant  prejudices  of  the  crowd  in  the  hall,  and 
gathering  the  incense  of  cheers  and  enthusiasm  from 
them,  not  because  of  the  wisdom  and  enlightenment  they 
were  drawing  from  him,  but  because  he  was  saying  what 
they  felt.  Yet  the  same  man  who  had  abused  the  capi- 
talists of  England  throughout  the  length  and  breadth 
of  the  country  from  all  kinds  of  popular  platforms,  was 
able,  without  the  least  difficulty,  to  become  their  spokes- 
man and  executive  officer  when  war  broke  out  and  the 
need  for  co-operation  with  the  whole  body  of  capitalists 
became  imperative.  No  one  was  ever  a  more  docile  and 
consequently  a  more  efficient  Chancellor  of  the  Exchequer 

108 


Crowd-Exponents 

under  such  circumstances.  He  had  no  prejudices.  He 
was  there  to  help  men  come  together,  to  listen  with  sweet 
reasonableness  to  the  wise,  to  catch  their  tone,  to  give 
effect  to  their  efforts  for  the  public  good.  Only  a  really- 
great  financier  capable  of  mastering  in  argument  the  big- 
gest minds  in  the  financial  world,  of  seeing  further  and 
more  deeply  into  the  enormous  problems  which  had  to 
be  solved  and  solved  at  once,  could  have  been  more  effi- 
cient than  he  was  with  his  docile  and  sympathetic  nature 
and  his  desire  to  discover  and  do  the  best.  Finally,  when 
party  differences  and  oppositions  were  submerged  under 
the  overmastering  tide  of  patriotic  union  with  which  the 
whole  country  moved  against  the  foreign  peril,  when, 
in  fact,  party  crowds  disappeared  and  were  fused  together 
within  the  great  single  national  crowd  made  supreme  by 
the  war,  no  one  better  than  Mr.  Lloyd  George  expressed 
the  emotions  of  that  crowd  also.  He  caught  its  spirit  at 
once  and  voiced  its  emotions,  nor  did  he  hesitate,  or  could 
he  have  brought  himself  to  hesitate,  speaking  for  it  on 
February  28th,  1915,  or  rather  it  speaking  in  him,  to  tell 
the  labour  crowd,  of  which  he  himself  had  so  often  before 
been  the  applauded  voice,  some  very  home  truths  not 
pleasant  for  it  to  hear;  and  this  he  did  not  as,  by  personal 
and  intellectual  conviction,  holding  opposite  views  to 
theirs,  but  because  another,  and  for  the  time  being  an 
opposed  and  superior  crowd,  was  finding  voice  in  him. 

Mr.  Lloyd  George  is  a  more  perfect  example  of  the 
highest  type  of  crowd-exponent  pure  and  simple  than 
was  Mr.  Gladstone.  Both  incorporated  the  emotions  of 
their  party  or  audience  with  similar  ease.  Mr.  Lecky 
made   the   profound   observation   that   Mr.    Gladstone's 

109 


The    Crowd   in    Peace   and   War 

vindictiveness  was  "more  frequently  directed  against 
"  classes  or  parties  than  against  individuals,"  an  indication 
of  the  absorption  of  his  emotions  in  those  of  his  crowd, 
for  crowds  envisage  crowds  or  crowd-representatives,  not 
individuals.  The  same  observation  is  likewise  true  of 
Mr.  Lloyd  George.  But  Mr.  Gladstone  was  besides  a 
man  of  powerful  individuality  and  had  strong  personal 
views  of  his  own  on  certain  matters,  and  those  he  never 
compromised  at  the  bidding  of  any  crowd,  but  rather 
showed  a  skilful  crowd-compulsion  in  avoiding  the  raising 
of  issues  which  would  have  placed  his  crowd-sympathies 
and  personal  convictions  in  opposition  to  one  another. 
Not  impossibly  Mr.  Lloyd  George  may  suffer  from  a 
like  fine  disability. 

The  crowd-exponent,  then,  is  the  voice  and  expression 
of  the  emotional  crowd.  Of  course  he  must  be  an  orator, 
because  he  must  possess  the  qualities  of  sensitiveness, 
sympathy,  and  emotion  which  are  essential  to  an  orator, 
and  he  must  command  the  flow  of  language  which  enables 
him  to  state  easily  and  at  once  the  emotions  he  experi- 
ences. He  is  likely  also  to  be  a  phrase-coiner.  He 
does  not  really  guide  the  crowd;  he  does  not  enlighten 
it;  he  does  not  drive  it.  It  enlightens  and  drives  him, 
so  that  his  words  and  urgencies  are  not  his  own  but  those 
of  the  crowd  with  which,  at  the  time  of  speaking,  he  is  in 
hypnotic  relation.  The  oratorical  impulse  disorganises 
a  speaker's  own  mind.  The  higher  faculties  of  reason 
cannot  operate  except  with  calm.  But  the  orator  neither 
conceives  nor  delivers  his  address  with  calm  mind.  His 
emotions  are  excited.  His  words  are  planned  and  spoken 
with  excitement.     This  with  us  is  as  true  of  speeches 

110 


Crowd- Exponents 

made  in  the  House  of  Commons  as  from  a  public  platform. 
It  is  one  of  the  peculiar  characteristics  of  the  House  of 
Commons  that  a  member  does  not,  as  in  some  other 
deliberative  assemblies,  ascend  a  tribune  and  address  the 
whole  house,  but  speaks  from  his  place  on  the  floor. 
Louis  Philippe,  conversing  with  Victor  Hugo,  described 
the  consequences  of  our  method.     He  said:  — 

"Have  you  seen  the  English  Parliament?  You  speak 
from  your  place,  standing  in  the  midst  of  your  own 
party.  You  are  carried  away;  you  say  more  often 
than  not  what  others  think  instead  of  what  you  think 
yourself.  There  is  a  magnetic  communication.  You 
are  subjected  to  it.  You  rise  (here  the  King  rose  and 
imitated  the  gesture  of  an  orator  speaking  in  Parlia- 
ment). The  assembly  ferments  all  round  and  close  to 
you;  you  let  yourself  go.  On  this  side  somebody  says, 
'England  has  suffered  a  gross  insult';  and  on  that  side, 
'with  gross  indignity.'  It  is  simply  applause  that  is 
sought  on  both  sides  —  nothing  more.  But  this  is  bad; 
it  is  dangerous;  it  is  baleful.  In  France  our  Tribune, 
which  isolates  the  orator,  has  many  advantages." 
According  to  Bagehot  it  used  to  be  said  that  "Mr. 
Pitt  thought  more  of  the  manner  in  which  his  measures 
would  strike  the  House  of  Commons  than  of  the  manner 
in  which,  when  carried,  they  would  work."  Thus  the 
strength  of  the  party  system  with  us  may  owe  a  good 
deal  to  the  mere  arrangement  of  seats  in  the  House  of 
Commons. 

A  crowd-exponent  need  not  necessarily  be  a  demagogue, 
though  the  temptation  to  sink  to  that  level  is  strong. 

There  was  nothing  of  the  demagogue  about  Mr.  Gladstone, 

ill 


The   Crowd  in    Peace  and  War 

or  any  of  the  really  great  crowd-exponents  whose  names 
are  held  in  honour.  As  a  crowd  is  merely  emotional,  its 
emotions  may  be  either  good  or  bad  or  both.  It  is  the 
dwelling-place  of  ideals;  it  is  likewise  the  home  of  preju- 
dice and  greed.  All  crowds  are  normally  hostile  to  all 
other  crowds.  That  is  in  the  nature  of  the  beast.  It 
follows  that  a  crowd-exponent  may  either  voice  the  ideals 
or  the  prejudices  of  a  crowd.  It  is  the  latter  that  is  the 
function  of  a  demagogue.  Bismarck,  who  was  not  in 
this  matter  an  impartial  observer,  stated  that  the  sup- 
port given  to  the  Social-democracy  in  Germany  in  his 
time  "rested  on  the  fact  that  the  judgment  of  the  masses 
"is  sufficiently  stultified  and  undeveloped  to  allow  them, 
"with  the  assistance  of  their  own  greed,  to  be  continually 
"caught  by  the  rhetoric  of  clever  and  ambitious  leaders." 
This  I  believe  to  be  a  false  conclusion.  It  is  not  the  crowd 
that  is  caught  by  the  demagogue,  but  the  demagogue  that 
is  caught  by  the  crowd.  We  saw  something  of  the  kind 
happen  to  Mr.  Lloyd  George  when  he  went  down  to 
Limehouse.  He  became  the  voice  of  all  that  is  worst  in 
class-greed  and  class-prejudice.  He  did  not  instil  those 
prejudices  into  his  audience.  He  found  them  already 
there  and  could  not  resist  the  temptation  to  give  them 
voice.  Such  is  the  danger  to  which  crowd-exponents  are 
constitutionally  exposed. 

Ambition  is  not  the  main  motive  power  that  urges  the 
crowd-compeller  to  action.  It  may  be  a  concurrent 
impulse,  but  the  determining  shock  that  sets  him  in 
action  is  his  own  forcefully  originated  idea.  He  has 
some  new  thing  to  accomplish;  he  wills  to  drive  the 
world  in  some  new  direction.     He  is  seized  by  an  irresist- 

112 


Crowd-Exponents 

ible  impulse  to  act.  He  can  realize  himself  in  no  other 
way  and  must  dominate  a  crowd  to  that  end.  But  am- 
bition is  the  main  spring  of  a  crowd-exponent's  life.  He 
cannot  and  does  not  desire  to  resist  the  impulse  within 
him  to  be  a  figure-head,  or  the  trumpet  of  another's  voice. 
There  is  the  great  crowd  hungering  for  expression,  ready 
to  acclaim  with  shouts  and  wonder  the  man  that  will 
express  its  emotions;  and  he,  feeling  those  same  emo- 
tions, longs  to  be  that  voice.  The  approval  of  the  crowd 
is  the  breath  of  his  life.  Instinct  impels  him  to  speak; 
applause  guides  his  words.  All  his  individual  qualities 
and  relationships  melt  in  the  fire  of  that  passion.  Once 
he  has  tasted  its  savour  he  cannot  live  without  the  incense 
of  crowd-approval.  If  they  will  not  follow  him  he  must 
at  least  run  on  in  front  of  them.  "I  am  their  leader!" 
This  in  fact  is  what  is  called  ambition  —  the  desire  to  be 
the  voice  and  representative  of  a  crowd,  not  merely  its 
official  representative  —  a  type  with  which  we  have  next 
to  deal  —  but  its  spiritual  representative,  feeling  with  it, 
quivering  in  every  fibre  with  its  life  and  emotions,  express- 
ing those  and  getting  back  from  the  crowd  that  recogni- 
tion which  it  always  gives  to  the  speaker  who  becomes  its 
voice.  The  crowd-exponent  is  the  typically  ambitious 
man. 


113 


CHAPTER  VIII 
CROWD-REPRESENTATIVES 

WITH  crowd-representatives  we  may  deal  more 
summarily,  because  as  the  name  implies  they 
are  picturesque  figureheads  rather  than  indi- 
vidual forces.  They  may  indeed  also  belong  to  one  of  the 
preceding  categories,  but,  in  so  far  as  that  is  the  case, 
they  do  not  differ  from  other  crowd-compellers  or  crowd- 
exponents.  A  constitutional  king  is  a  crowd-representa- 
tive. As  such  he  is  a  kind  of  official  crowd-exponent, 
but  more  rarely  he  may  be  a  crowd-compeller.  The  King 
of  the  Belgians  has  shown  himself  a  most  efficient  and 
powerful  leader  of  men,  who  could  hold  his  nation  as  in 
the  hollow  of  his  hand  or  lead  it  whither  without  him  it 
would  not  have  gone.  Such  kings  are  exceptions;  accord- 
ing to  one  modern  theory  of  constitutional  government 
they  are  held  to  be  not  even  desirable  in  ordinary  times. 
The  constitutional  king  is  the  personification  of  his  people. 
He  speaks  with  their  voice;  he  acts  for  them;  he  stands 
for  them  in  the  sight  of  the  world.  He  performs  these 
functions  only  in  his  public  capacity.  In  private  life  he 
may  be  what  he  pleases,  provided  that  the  public  is  un- 
aware. All  that  the  public  can  of  a  certainty  know  of  him 
must  conform  to  the  public  sentiment.  He  must  at  any 
rate  appear  to  feel  as  the  public  feels  on  all  occasions. 
His  known  acts  must  conform  to  the  public  will.     The 

114 


Crowd- Representatives 

king,  therefore,  is  not  an  individual  but  himself  a  crowd, 
and  not  any  crowd  but  the  particular  crowd  which  is 
the  nation  he  incorporates.  Hence  all  the  apparatus 
of  ministers,  ministerial  responsibility,  and  the  like,  to 
ensure  the  conformity  of  his  public  words  and  actions  with 
the  sentiment  of  the  crowd.  Hence  his  messages  of  sym- 
pathy on  the  occasion  of  such  tragedies  as  the  public 
takes  notice  of.  A  thousand  individuals  may  be  drowned 
at  sea  in  the  normal  average  number  of  months,  one  here 
one  there,  the  crowd  takes  no  notice;  but  if  a  ship  goes 
down  and  drowns  a  thousand  at  one  time,  the  public, 
feeling  its  great  self  perceptibly  wounded,  cries  its  regrets 
and  a  royal  missive  gives  them  expression.  So  with 
mining  tragedies:  each  day  takes  its  toll,  and  even  the 
local  newspapers  scarcely  record  the  recurring  deaths  of 
units,  though  in  a  year  their  total  number  far  exceeds 
that  of  those  slain  in  great  accidents.  But  let  a  great 
accident  kill  at  once  enough  men  to  look  like  a  crowd,  the 
public  feels  the  wound,  and  its  royal  spokesman  expresses 
the  public  emotion.  So  when  a  crowd-representative  dies 
the  public  is  again  moved,  because  it  is  wounded,  and 
there  follows  a  more  or  less  public  funeral  with  royalty 
present  in  person  or  by  attorney. 

Again  when  the  King  opens  Parliament  or  performs 
some  such  public  function,  he  acts  for  the  crowd  and 
marks  the  nature  of  the  occasion  as  one  affecting  the 
organised  social  body.  When  Milton  published  "Para- 
"dise  Lost"  no  king  proclaimed  the  event,  nor  would  it 
seem  congruous  for  royalty  to  take  official  notice  of  even 
the  greatest  achievement  of  an  independent  non-represen- 
tative individual.     The  publication    by  Darwin  of  the 

115 


The   Crowd   in    Peace   and   War 

"Origin  of  Species"  was  a  far  more  important  event  in  the 
world's  history  than,  let  us  say,  the  opening  of  docks  at 
Liverpool;  but  the  one  was  the  act  of  an  individual 
addressing  individuals,  the  other  the  concern  of  a  crowd: 
hence  the  propriety  of  the  intervention  of  royalty  to  give 
public  recognition  in  the  latter  case  but  not  in  the  former. 

If  sin  be  defined  as  an  action  done  by  an  individual  to 
the  detriment  of  the  crowd  to  which  he  belongs,  and  the 
largest  category  of  sins  is  certainly  of  that  sort,  it  follows 
that  an  individual  who  in  fact  incorporates  his  crowd  and 
cannot  act  but  in  conformity  with  it,  cannot  sin.  A  king, 
therefore,  can  do  no  wrong  when  he  is  acting  publicly  as 
king;  whilst  constitutional  securities  prevent  him  from 
publicly  acting  in  any  other  way.  Thus  too  the  Pope  is 
of  necessity  infallible,  from  the  point  of  view  of  his  crowd, 
when  he  speaks  ex  cathedra  and  de  fide,  that  is  to  say 
under  the  restrictive  control  of  all  those  securities  which 
in  fact  provide  that  he  shall  voice  the  sentiments  of  the 
crowd  which  he  officially  incorporates.  His  infallibility 
cannot,  ex  hypothesi,  extend  beyond  the  limits  of  the 
crowd  for  which  and  by  which  he  speaks,  like  the  infalli- 
bility which  in  the  law  courts  belongs  to  a  final  Court  of 
Appeals,  the  difference  being  that  the  one  applies  to  the 
domain  of  faith,  the  other  to  the  domain  of  affairs.  But 
faith  is  the  principal  affair  of  a  church,  so  that  the  analogy 
between  the  two  is  complete.  The  judgment  uttered  is 
for  men  to  guide  their  actions  by;  as  to  its  soundness  the 
future  will  more  or  less  impartially  decide. 

The  murder  of  a  king  is  a  more  heinous  offence  than 
the  murder  of  an  ordinary  individual,  because  it  is  a  more 
direct  injury  done  to  a  crowd,  and  this  is  true  whether 

116 


Crowd- Representatives 

he  be  a  hereditary  or  an  elected  monarch.  Here  is  the 
opinion  of  a  prominent  American  statesman  on  the  sub- 
ject, regarded  from  his  own  local  point  of  view:  — 

"There  is  no  conceivable  crime  so  atrocious  as  the  causeless 
"murder  of  the  chosen  ruler  of  a  free  people.  Such  crimes  rise 
"infinitely  higher  than  crimes  against  the  individual.  They 
"are  crimes  against  humanity,  civilisation,  and  the  country's 
"life;  against  society,  law,  and  liberty.  They  are  a  blot  upon 
"free  institutions,  a  stain  upon  the  flag.  They  undermine  the 
"happiness  and  well-being  of  the  people.  They  lower  our 
"standing  and  character  in  the  opinion  of  mankind.  They  are 
"blows  aimed  at  the  Presidency  and  self-government;  at  the 
"town  meeting,  the  state,  and  the  nation;  at  all  our  institutions, 
"and  everything  which  finds  expression  in  the  words  'Our 
"  *  Country.'  " 

What  moved  this  gentleman's  indignation  was  not  the 
destruction  of  an  individual's  life  or  the  grief  thereby 
brought  on  other  individuals  who  loved  him,  but  solely 
the  wound  inflicted  on  the  crowd.  Every  word  of  his 
invective  is  directed  against  one  who  injures  a  crowd, 
not  one  who  merely  slays  a  man.  As  crowd-opinion 
determines  the  relative  heinousness  of  this  or  the  other 
crime,  it  naturally  estimates  as  worse  the  crimes  done 
against  itself.  From  the  individual's  point  of  view  murder 
is  alike  murder  whoever  is  killed,  but  the  crowd  of  course 
thinks  otherwise. 

I  have  often  wondered  what  his  national  crowd  comes 
in  process  of  time  to  look  like  to  a  king,  who  is  always 
blared  at  by  it  with  the  same  anthem,  always  halloed  at 
with  the  same  cheers;  who  always  beholds  it  under  the 
flutter  of  flags,  lined  along  streets,  or  massed  in  open 

117 


The   Crowd   in    Peace   and   War 

places;  who  always  addresses  to  it  the  same  platitudes 
and  receives  from  it  the  same  reactions.  Once,  indeed, 
during  a  few  days  it  fell  to  my  lot  in  a  foreign  country  to 
be  in  the  immediate  neighbourhood  of  royalty  during  a 
national  festival,  and  to  behold  the  crowd  as  they  beheld 
it  and  practically  from  their  standpoint.  Its  astonishing 
uniformity  of  appearance  was  what  struck  me.  It  was 
an  extraordinarily  loyal  crowd  to  look  at,  and  always 
shouted  when  the  king  and  queen  were  in  sight.  There 
was  no  apparent  variation  in  its  aspect  or  its  behaviour. 
It  possessed  one  emotion  and  one  only.  But  I  could 
not  fail  to  observe  the  great  respect  with  which  its 
sovereigns  treated  it.  Their  deep  obeisances  to  it  from  the 
palace  balcony  overlooking  a  vast  city  square  were  even 
more  profound  than  those  with  which  they  themselves 
had  just  been  saluted  by  the  courtiers  assembled  in  the 
room  that  opened  on  to  the  balcony.  In  fact  both  salu- 
tations were  given  to  the  same  entity,  for  it  was  the  nation 
incorporated  in  the  sovereigns  that  the  courtiers  saluted, 
and  it  was  a  specimen  portion  of  the  nation  itself  to  which 
the  sovereigns  did  their  large  courtesies. 

A  Judge,  when  on  the  bench,  is  another  type  of  crowd- 
representative.  In  pronouncing  judgment  upon  an  of- 
fender he  speaks  with  the  voice  of  the  public;  but  in 
order  that  he  may  surely  do  so  he  is  surrounded  by  all 
manner  of  securities  and  limitations.  The  opinions  ex- 
pressed by  a  judge  in  private  life  possess  no  more  authority 
than  those  of  any  other  educated  individual  of  equal 
ability.  It  is  only  when  he  occupies  the  position  of 
crowd-representative  and  is  conditioned  by  the  securities 
which  crowd-organisation  supplies  that  his  opinions  have 

118 


Crowd-Representatives 

the  value  with  which  the  crowd  invests  them,  as  uttered 
on  its  behalf  and  in  conformity  with  its  views. 

Elected  representatives  of  the  people  are  those  about 
whom  the  public  knows  most  and  whose  representative 
capacity  they  most  clearly  understand.  Some  of  them 
have  reached  the  positions  they  occupy  by  crowd-com- 
pulsion, more  by  crowd-exposition,  and  yet  more  by 
personal  relations  with  leading  individuals,  who  are  able 
to  put  them  forward  and  procure  their  election.  For 
when  it  comes  to  the  act  of  election,  all  any  crowd  can  do 
is  to  choose  between  the  two  or  three  individuals  who 
have  succeeded  in  obtaining  nomination,  and  efficient 
nomination  is  not  made  by  the  crowd  but  by  the  organ- 
isers who  control  it.  It  follows  that  amongst  the  elected 
personages  who  represent  crowds  the  large  majority  pos- 
sess none  of  the  qualities  of  crowd-compellers  or  crowd- 
exponents.  They  do  not  in  their  heart  and  nature  express 
its  emotions,  either  because  they  have  imposed  theirs 
upon  it  or  because  they  have  actually  absorbed  its  emo- 
tions and  made  them  their  own.  They  are  merely  indi- 
viduals who  have  adopted  a  set  of  opinions  for  public  and 
practical  use,  while  their  own  true  opinions  remain  un- 
affected, or  locked  in  the  privacy  of  their  own  hearts. 
Thus  the  following  conversation  is  related  to  have  taken 
place  between  two  famous  leaders  of  their  respective 
parties  about  twenty  years  ago.  "Has  it  never  happened 
"to  you,"  inquired  the  first,  "among  all  your  mutations  of 
"opinion,  to  feel  that  in  fact  the  principles  of  our  party 
"are  more  in  accordance  with  your  own  views  than  are 
"those  of  the  party  to  which  you  belong?"  "No!" 
replied  the  other,  "because,  of  the  two,  the  principles  of 

119 


The   Crowd  in    Peace   and   War 

"your  party  have  always  seemed  to  me  perhaps  a  trifle 
"more  inept." 

Let  me  repeat  that  official  crowd-representatives  are 
not  the  same  as  the  crowd-exponents  whom  we  have 
discussed  above.  Crowd-exponents  are  those  who  in- 
stinctively voice  the  emotion  of  a  crowd  and  do  so  be- 
cause they  cannot  help  it.  It  is  the  immediate  emotion 
of  the  crowd  that  they  express,  and,  as  nothing  is  more 
fickle,  so  their  expression  is  chameleon-like  in  its  varia- 
tion. Nevertheless  they  themselves  are  always  honest. 
But  the  great  national  public  is  slower  to  change  in  pro- 
portion to  its  size,  and  does  in  fact  possess  a  foundation 
of  more  or  less  settled  opinion.  The  crowd-representative 
is  called  into  being,  and  hedged  around  with  conditions,  in 
order  that  he  may  consistently  express  this  settled  opinion. 
According  to  the  representative's  position  and  social  func- 
tion, so  are  the  forces  organised  about  him  which  com- 
pel and  limit  his  utterance.  Avenues  of  information  are 
opened  to  him  which  put  him  in  direct  connection  with 
the  crowd  itself.  He  is  in  touch  with  the  crowd-exponents 
and  with  the  whole  body  of  crowd-representatives,  so 
that  when  he  speaks  officially  he  does  so  with  a  very  much 
larger  brain  backing  him  than  that  which  is  contained  in 
his  own  head.  President  Wilson's  idea  seems  to  be  that 
the  head  of  a  nation  has  no  business  to  do  more  than 
voice  the  already  formed  opinion  of  his  people.  He  is 
not  to  guide  and  instruct  them,  not  to  show  them  the  way, 
but  chiefly  to  follow  in  their  wake.  "In  a  democrary," 
he  says,  "it  is  for  the  people  to  decide  upon  national  duty. 
"It  is  for  those  who  stand  at  their  head  to  endeavour  to 
"express  those  things  that  seem  to  rise  out  of  the  con- 

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Crowd- Representatives 

"science,  the  hope,  and  the  purpose  of  the  great  body  of 
"the  people  themselves." 

One  crowd  communicates  and  deals  with  another  by 
means  of  crowd-representatives,  the  mode  of  communi- 
cation being  described  as  diplomacy.  The  term  is  gen- 
erally confined  to  relations  between  nations,  but  in  fact  all 
negotiations  between  crowds  are  of  the  kind  called  diplo- 
matic. There  is  as  much  diplomacy  in  dealings  between 
organised  bodies  of  masters  and  men  as  between  nations. 
Even  the  communications  between  two  cricket  clubs  in 
the  matter  of  arranging  matches  are  diplomatic.  Like 
qualities  are  needed  in  negotiators,  whether  named  secre- 
taries or  ambassadors.  It  is  merely  the  field  of  action  that 
is  larger  or  smaller;  the  character  of  the  action  is  the 
same  whenever  two  crowds  are  in  communication  with 
one  another. 

Seeing  that  crowds  are  not  of  the  same  kind  as  individ- 
uals, but  are  beings  of  another  sort,  they  are  not  governed 
by  the  same  principles  of  action  nor  by  the  same  moral 
law  as  individuals.  It  follows  that  the  relations  of  crowds 
are  not  like  those  of  individuals,  and  that  not  all  the  tests 
of  honour,  truthfulness,  candour,  and  the  like,  by  which 
the  relations  of  individuals  to  one  another  are  judged, 
apply  to  the  relations  of  crowds.  If  Machiavelli  did  not 
understand  the  nature  of  crowds,  he  at  any  rate  truth- 
fully perceived  the  conditions  under  which  diplomacy  is 
carried  on  by  crowd-representatives,  and  nothing  needs  to 
be  added  to  his  exposition  of  that  matter.  International 
politics  are  substantially  to-day  what  they  were  in  the 
sixteenth  century,  except  in  so  far  as  the  whole  of  human- 
ity has  since  then  proceeded  —  a  very  short  distance  — 

121 


The   Crowd   in  Peace   and   War 

toward  the  organisation  of  a  world-controlling  public 
opinion.  The  utter  feebleness  of  that  restraint  upon 
nations  is  pathetically  demonstrated  by  the  ruins  of 
Louvain  and  the  battered  cathedral  of  Rheims. 

Among  men  of  honour  it  is  recognised  that  to  dupe  a 
fellow-man  is  a  mean  and  disgraceful  action.  To  dupe, 
however,  has  often  been  one  of  the  great  aims  of  diplo- 
macy. Hear  what  Frederick  the  Great  had  to  say  about 
it.  "Comme  parmi  les  hommes  Ton  est  convenu  que 
"duper  son  semblable  etait  une  action  criminelle,  Ton  a 
"ete  oblige  de  chercher  un  autre  terme  qui  adoucit  la 
"chose,  et  c'est  le  mot  de  Politique  que  Ton  a  choisi  infal- 
"liblement.  Ce  mot  n'a  ete  choisi  qu'en  faveur  des 
"Souverains,  parceque  decemment  Ton  ne  peut  pas  nous 
"traiter  de  coquins  et  de  fripons;  quoi  qu'il  en  soit,  voici 
"au  vrai  ce  que  je  pense  sur  la  Politique."  The  reason 
why  you  cannot  treat  as  a  rascal  a  king  acting  officially 
is  because  he  is  a  crowd,  and  you  "cannot  bring  an  indict- 
"ment  against"  a  crowd.  A  crowd  may  and  often  does 
act  viciously  or  wickedly  from  the  point  of  view  of  indi- 
viduals, but  it  is  not  subject  to  the  laws  or  to  the  morals 
which  restrain  individuals,  nor  can  it  be  punished  in  the 
same  way.  Hence  crowds  and  their  official  representa- 
tives as  such  stand  outside  the  ordinary  moral  law,  and 
so  therefore  does  diplomacy  in  the  present  condition  of  the 
world.  Thoughtless  persons  sometimes  talk  about  the 
behaviour  proper  to  a  Christian  nation.  There  is  no  such 
thing  as  a  Christian  nation ;  there  are  only  Christian  indi- 
viduals. The  Christ  that  shall  save  the  nations  has  not 
yet  been  revealed  to  them.  When  wars  cease  for  ever 
His  coming  will  be  at  hand. 

122 


Crowd- Representatives 

Besides  the  crowd-representatives  who  are  born  and 
bred  to  the  business,  or  those,  like  judges,  diplomatists, 
and  the  like  who  are  educated  and  selected  for  the  posi- 
tions they  have  to  fill,  there  is  also  the  large  body  of  rep- 
resentative men  who,  as  we  have  just  noted,  are  merely 
elected  by  different  kinds  of  constituencies  for  the  posi- 
tions they  have  to  fill.  These  men  are  not  prepared 
for  those  positions  by  any  system  of  education,  nor  are 
they  any  longer  taken  from  a  class  of  men  so  prepared  by 
birth  and  bringing  up.  It  is  quite  possible  for  any  active 
and  pushing  individual  with  a  glib  tongue  to  thrust  him- 
self forward  into  public  notice,  and  sooner  or  later  he 
will  find  some  way  to  enter  public  life  in  a  representative 
capacity.  This  casual  and  unscientific  system  has  been 
suffered  to  come  into  being,  and  to  maintain  itself  under 
present  circumstances,  because  we  live  in  a  time  of  great 
crowd-selfconsciousness  and  crowd-power.  The  only  way 
in  which  a  crowd  can  operate  is  through  representatives 
who  act  in  harmony  with  its  views;  and  the  system,  not 
so  much  of  election,  but  of  re-election  at  relatively  fre- 
quent intervals,  secures  the  subservience  of  the  represent- 
ative individual  to  the  crowd  he  represents,  and  thus 
gives  dominion  to  the  crowd  in  proportion  to  the  power 
of  its  elected  representatives.  We  shall  have  more  to  say 
on  this  matter  when  we  come  to  deal  with  the  question 
of  government.  Here  we  have  only  to  consider  the 
effect  of  his  representative  position  on  the  representative 
himself. 

In  the  first  place  the  whole  process  of  candidature  is  a 
great  education  to  him.  He  has  frequent  opportunities 
of  addressing  the  constituent  body,  and  on  every  occasion 

123 


The   Crowd   in    Peace  and   War 

it  is  his  business  to  make  the  crowd  feel  that  he  is  one  in 
heart  with  it.  Its  reaction  upon  him  is  therefore  liable 
to  be  much  stronger  than  his  action  upon  it,  for  the  crowd 
before  him  does  not  derive  many  of  its  passions  from  him, 
but  rather  from  the  newspapers  and  from  other  agencies 
that  form  and  spread  public  opinion,  his  own  speeches 
(unless  he  be  of  the  rare  crowd-compelling  sort)  having 
but  small  formative  power  on  the  views  of  the  crowd 
compared  with  the  power  exercised  by  the  great  drifts  and 
pressures  of  national  and  local  opinion.  It  follows  that 
the  candidate  is  more  markedly  fashioned  by  the  constitu- 
ency than  the  constituency  is  modified  by  the  candidate; 
so  that  after  the  operation  has  been  continued  through  a 
sufficient  length  of  time  the  candidate  may  as  a  rule  be 
expected  to  emerge  "a  good  party  man,"  who  can  be 
relied  on  to  conform  in  all  his  public  statements  and  known 
acts  to  the  party  standards.  He  thus  comes  to  be  in  fact 
the  incorporation  for  practical  purposes  of  his  crowd,  and 
may  grow  to  be  regarded  as  almost  identified  with  it.  It 
is  said,  and  said  with  truth,  that  "the  significance  of  shak- 
ing hands  with  a  Senator  of  the  United  States  is  that  it 
"is  a  convenient  and  labour-saving  way  of  shaking  hands 
"with  two  or  three  million  people.  The  impressiveness 
"  of  the  Senator's  Washington  voice,  the  voice  on  the  floor 
"of  the  Senate,  consists  in  the  mystical  undertone, — 
"the  chorus  in  it,  —  multitudes  in  smoking  cities,  men  and 
"women,  rich  and  poor,  who  are  speaking  when  this  man 
"speaks,  and  who  are  silent  when  he  is  silent,  in  the 
"government  of  the  United  States." 

Such  does  the  elected  crowd-representative  appear  in 
the  public  eye,  and  such  the  public  believes  him  to  be. 

124 


Crowd- Representatives 

In  actual  fact,  in  the  privacy  of  his  own  home,  he  may  be 
an  altogether  different  person  from  the  public  character 
he  plays.  But  he  must  so  play  the  character  as  to  deceive 
the  constituency;  hence  what  Mr.  Bonar  Law  has  called 
"the  make-believe  that  is  part  of  the  daily  life  of  all  poli- 
"  ticians."  He  may  in  fact  be  immoral,  a  gambler,  a  drunk- 
ard, a  terror  in  his  home,  or  vicious  in  one  or  more  of  a 
thousand  ways;  but  as  long  as  his  actions  are  not  officially 
known,  not  publicly  stated  in  a  form  which  the  law  of 
libel  can  deal  with,  so  long  may  his  constituency  remain 
blind,  and  be  content  to  hold  him  as  a  model  of  all  the 
virtues  and  prejudices  it  applauds.  So  again  a  man  may 
cherish  in  private  what  religious  opinions  or  vacuum  of 
opinion  he  pleases.  In  public  the  mere  crowd-represen- 
tative will  have  to  conform  so  far  as  to  satisfy  public 
opinion.  Take  for  instance  a  newspaper  of  high  class  — 
let  us  say  the  "Times."  It  has  a  definite  attitude  toward 
religious  questions  and  may  be  relied  on  to  express  in  its 
editorial  columns  certain  views  in  relation  to  them.  Does 
anyone  suppose  that  those  are  the  private  views  of  the 
proprietors,  editors,  and  writers  of  the  paper?  They  may 
be  or  they  may  not;  the  only  thing  certain  about  them  is 
that  they  are  supposed  and  indeed  known  to  be  the  views 
of  the  public  that  reads  the  paper,  and  probably  also 
more  or  less  of  the  actual  writer  employed  to  set  them 
forth.  Just  as  a  newspaper  has  to  voice  the  views  of  its 
public,  so  does  an  elected  representative  man.  Rare  is  the 
person  who  can  openly  adhere  to  his  own  opinion,  when  it 
is  not  the  opinion  of  his  constituency,  and  who  can  yet 
maintain  himself  as  its  accepted  representative.  So  Lord 
Morley  did  for  a  time  at  Newcastle  when  there  was  an 

125 


The   Crowd  in    Peace   and   War 

acknowledged  divergence  between  him  and  his  supporters 
on  the  question  of  the  Eight-hour  day.  That  such  a 
divergence  should  long  continue  between  a  constituency 
and  its  representative  is  not  often  desirable.  Usually 
one  should  convert  the  other  or  they  should  separate; 
but  this  consideration  is  beyond  the  scope  of  the  present 
chapter. 


126 


CHAPTER  IX 
CROWD-ORGANISATION 

REFERENCE  has  already  been  made  at  several 
points  of  our  investigation  to  the  different  de- 
grees of  organisation  which  a  crowd  is  capable 
of.  Let  us  now  for  a  brief  space  fix  our  attention  directly 
on  that  question.  The  organisation  of  a  crowd  has  three 
main  purposes:  to  secure  some  degree  of  continuity  and 
persistence  to  its  emotions,  to  provide  it  with  a  substi- 
tute for  the  brain  which  it  lacks,  and  to  give  it  executive 
power,  that  is  to  say,  power  to  give  effect  to  its  emo- 
tional desires  and  ideals  in  the  region  of  human  accom- 
plishment and  evolution. 

An  unorganised  crowd  or  mob  is  purely  destructive;  it 
is  without  power  to  create  or  upbuild.  A  mob  can  de- 
stroy individuals,  other  mobs,  or  the  work  of  men's  hands. 
It  can  rush  headlong  like  a  mad  creature  upon  an  enemy 
and  fight  with  the  fury  of  a  wild  beast,  yet  even  so  it  is 
very  inefficient;  a  much  smaller  group  of  disciplined  units 
can  overpower  it  with  relative  ease,  as  a  small  body 
of  police  constables  is  able  to  demonstrate  whenever 
called  upon.  Organisation  therefore  not  merely  directs 
the  power  of  a  crowd  to  some  definite  end,  but  greatly 
increases  its  efficiency. 

No  crowd,  however,  can  organise  itself.  It  must  be 
organised  by  individuals  who  acquire  its  confidence  or 

127 


The   Crowd  in   Peace  and  War 

are  able  to  impose  their  authority  upon  it.  They  may  or 
may  not  be  themselves  moved  by  its  emotions,  though 
their  authority  will  finally  rest  on  the  belief  of  the  crowd 
that  they  are  so.  For  it  is  only  by  possessing  a  common 
emotion  that  a  crowd  comes  into  being,  and  the  main 
purpose  of  those  who  would  organise,  control,  and  direct 
it  is  to  kindle  and  maintain  that  emotion  at  a  high  tem- 
perature and  over  a  long  period  of  time.  But  to  main- 
tain among  the  multitude  that  kind  of  steadfast  volition 
which  will  tranquillize  every  mental  tumult  in  the  indi- 
vidual unit  presupposes  the  infusion  of  a  high  ideal.  This 
is  the  end  of  all  noble  propaganda  and  of  all  proud  national 
tradition.  It  is  their  high  purpose,  whereunto  all  consti- 
tutions, patriotic  and  political  enthusiasms,  pride  of  race, 
esprit  de  corps,  and  the  like  emotions  are  to  be  cherished. 
" Palton  Ice  wasti!"  (for  the  batallion),  cries  the  Gurkha 
and  charges  joyously  to  his  death.  " For  God  and  King! " 
"For  Fatherland!"  "Pour  la  France!"  "England expects 
every  man  to  do  his  duty  ! "  —  all  are  beneficent  crowd- 
cries,  constraining  the  unit  to  high  and  noble  deeds.  The 
individual  is  guided  by  a  complexity  of  motives.  The 
crowd  follows  not  motives  but  sentiments  and  ideals. 
Only  an  ideal  can  concentrate  the  desires  of  many  into  a 
common  all-embracing  effort;  and  ideals  are  kindled 
rather  than  taught.  An  individual  may  have  a  definite 
and  reasoned  purpose  in  what  he  does.  A  crowd  has  an 
emotional  aim.  The  crowd-units,  whatever  their  indi- 
vidual purposes  in  life,  must,  in  so  far  as  they  belong  to  the 
crowd,  sacrifice  them  in  the  interests  of  the  emotional 
aim.  He  that  loseth  his  separate  individual  life  in  the 
life  of  a  crowd  shall  find  another  life  in  that.     A  crowd 

128 


Crowd- Organisation 

which  cannot  control  its  members  to  the  common  end 
will  fail  for  lack  of  the  organisation  by  which  alone  that 
control  can  become  efficient. 

Germany  has  given  the  world  an  example  for  all  time 
of  how  the  millions  of  a  people  can  be  organised  and 
brought  to  act  together  for  a  common  emotional  end  — 
Deutschland  iiber  Alles!  The  contrast  is  indeed  great 
between  the  broken,  humiliated  German  states  after  the 
battle  of  Jena  and  the  unified,  mighty,  and  efficient  Empire 
that  declared  war  on  the  world  in  July,  1914.  That 
Empire  was  possessed  by  a  single  ideal  —  its  own  expan- 
sion. The  number  of  Germans  who  did  not  share  it  were 
too  few  to  count.  By  the  purpose  and  compelling  force 
of  a  succession  of  leading  men  the  units  and  sub-crowds 
of  the  Germans  had  been  inflamed  with  a  common  passion 
and  at  the  same  time  organised  into  a  tremendous  inte- 
gral whole,  such  as  ancient  Rome  alone  had  dimly  fore- 
shadowed. Every  agency  had  been  directed  towards  the 
intended  result.  "Schools,  army-discipline,  scientific 
"research,  commercial  resourcefulness,  technical  skill, 
"governmental  efficiency,  social  legislation  —  all  were 
"well-considered  parts  of  one  comprehensive,  far-reaching, 
"imperial  programme."  Every  live  nation  has  some  kind 
of  faith  in  its  ideals  and  confidence  in  its  destiny,  but  that 
is  very  different  from  a  keen  clear  sense  of  national  pur- 
pose; the  difference  lies  in  the  organising  brain  that 
obtains  control  over  the  emotional  but  brainless  human 
mass.  For  just  as  a  cunning  and  masterful  speaker  can 
artfully  kindle  the  enthusiasm  of  a  public  meeting  and 
direct  it  whither  he  pleases,  so  can  a  great  statesman 
obtain  control  over  and  direct  the  organisation  of  a  people, 

129 


The   Crowd  in   Peace  and  War 

and  can  train  up  and  direct  other  individuals  to  assist 
and  prolong  his  initiative  through  a  succession  of  genera- 
tions. Herein,  indeed,  consists  the  difference  between  a 
statesman  and  mere  politicians.  The  politician  is  like 
some  casual  man  standing  on  the  deck  of  a  rudderless 
ship  which  is  proceeding  unsteered  among  winds  and 
currents,  whithersoever  it  happens  to  head,  he  from 
time  to  time  calling  out  empty  orders  to  steer  this 
way  or  that  but  only  as  he  discovers  the  vessel 
itself  to  be  proceeding;  a  statesman,  on  the  contrary, 
resembles  an  able  navigator  who,  directing  his  course 
by  sun  and  stars  and  understanding  the  forms  and 
forces  of  nature  amidst  which  the  vessel  must  make  its 
way,  steers  the  ship  towards  a  determined  port,  using  its 
engines  as  motive  power,  but  himself  actually  supplying 
all  the  guidance. 

Every  organised  crowd  realises  its  own  inefficiency  and 
is  ready  to  accept  a  leader  as  soon  as  one  becomes  visible 
to  it;  even  a  mere  mob  thus  behaves.  This  is  the  veriest 
rudiment  of  crowd-organisation.  So  long  as  the  leader 
stands  alone  his  position  is  perilously  insecure.  Experi- 
ence has  proved  that  he  must  have  the  support  of  other 
individuals,  themselves  in  more  or  less  close  relation  with 
the  whole  or  parts  of  the  whole  body,  and  out  of  this  experi- 
ence has  now  grown  the  well-understood  system  which  in 
these  days  is  the  normal  and  probably  necessary  skeleton 
of  all  crowd-organisation,  that  namely  of  representative 
committees,  and  in  the  final  resort  of  a  small  executive 
committee  with  a  more  or  less  authoritative  chairman. 
Committees,  by  whatever  name  they  are  called,  are  the 
brains  of  crowds.     It  is  by  them  that  a  crowd  thinks;  it 

130 


Crowd- Organisation 

is  through  them  that  it  acts;  it  is  in  accordance  with  their 
decision  that  it  is  governed.  A  committee  may  have  an 
acknowledged  head  by  which  it  is  despotically  directed,  or 
it  may  be  a  small  deliberative  body  in  which  every  mem- 
ber has  some  decisive  influence.  These  are  details  about 
which  the  crowd  need  know  nothing  and  we  need  not  dis- 
cuss. The  essential  fact  for  the  crowd  is  that  it  should 
believe  its  executive  Committee  to  be  in  sympathy  with 
the  crowd's  own  ideals  and  aims,  and  able  and  determined 
to  devise  and  put  into  effect  means  for  carrying  out  the 
crowd's  desires.  The  committee  may  be  called  into  exist- 
ence in  a  variety  of  ways.  Its  members  may  be  elected 
directly  or  indirectly,  or  nominated  by  other  crowd-rep- 
resentatives. These  are  mere  questions  of  detail.  The 
one  essential  is  that  the  feelings  and  aims  of  the  committee 
as  a  whole  and  of  the  individual  members  of  it,  in  so  far 
as  the  crowd  is  cognisant  of  them,  should  be  in  harmony 
with  those  of  the  crowd  itself. 

The  various  precautions  to  keep  the  crowd  and  its 
governing  and  executive  committee  in  harmony  with  one 
another  are  called  the  constitution  of  the  crowd,  and  this 
constitution  may  either  be  plainly  set  down  in  words  or 
traditionally  understood,  preserved,  and  acted  upon.  The 
larger,  the  older,  the  better  organised  a  crowd  may  be,  the 
more  elaborate  its  constitution;  but  without  a  constitu- 
tion of  some  kind  not  even  a  cricket  club  can  long  exist. 
I  have  known  a  dining-club  without  a  constitution,  but 
that  merely  meant  that  it  did  what  its  President  decreed, 
and  he  was  not  really  free  to  decree  this  or  that  according 
to  his  own  whim,  but  preserved  in  his  mind  what  he  knew 
to  be  the  habits  and  preferences  of  the  members,  even  as 

131 


The   Crowd  in    Peace   and  War 

the  Common  Law  of  England  is  said  to  reside  in  the  bosom 
of  a  judge. 

The  degree  of  a  crowd's  organisation  is  not,  however, 
only  to  be  measured  by  the  elaboration  of  its  constitution, 
but  even  more  by  the  power  to  control  the  action  of  indi- 
vidual units  conceded  to  the  executive  by  the  general 
body.  The  Democratic  theory  of  government  in  the 
United  States  is  that  the  ultimate  source  and  reservoir 
of  power  is  and  remains  the  individual  citizen,  who  pos- 
sesses all  the  rights  that  he  has  not  parted  with  to  the 
town-meeting.  The  town-meeting  in  its  turn  possesses  all 
the  rights  that  it  has  not  parted  with  to  the  County,  the 
County  those  it  has  not  parted  with  to  the  State,  and  the 
State  all  the  rights  that  it  has  not  parted  with  to  the 
Federal  Body,  which  in  its  turn  possesses  those  powers 
and  rights  only  which  it  has  thus  constitutionally  received. 
The  European  theory  of  government,  on  the  contrary,  is 
that  all  rights  reside  in  the  sovereign,  and  that  subordi- 
nate assemblies  and  individual  subjects  possess  only  such 
rights  as  the  Government  has  delegated  to  them  by  con- 
stitutional enactment  or  acknowledged  tradition.  In 
practice  both  theories  work  out  to  the  same  result,  and  the 
individual  is  under  a  like  compulsion  to  do  and  abstain 
from  doing  a  great  number  of  acts.  In  process  of  time 
the  organisation  of  so-called  civilised  national  crowds  has 
become  very  elaborate,  more  so  in  some  states  such  as 
Germany,  less  in  others  such  as  England.  In  proportion 
to  the  completeness  of  the  organisation  is  the  power  and 
efficiency  of  the  collective  body. 

What  is  true  of  nations  is  true  in  a  less  degree  and  mu- 
tatis mutandis  with  all  other  crowds.    The  more  elaborately 

132 


Crowd-Organisation 

and  strongly  they  are  organised,  the  more  persistent  are 
their  ideals  and  the  more  efficient  is  their  collective  action. 
The  Church  of  Rome  is  more  efficiently  organised  than 
the  Church  of  England,  and  is  to  that  extent  more  power- 
ful in  its  collective  action.  The  one  can  restrain  where 
the  other  cannot.  The  one  is  potent  for  good  or  evil 
where  the  other  is  impotent.  Many  of  the  Free  Churches 
are  less  elaborately  organised  than  is  the  Church  of  Eng- 
land and  their  efficiency  for  public  action  is  thus  feebler. 
I  once  became  cognisant  of  circumstances  which  mani- 
fested this  difference  of  efficiency  in  a  very  remarkable 
manner.  It  was  in  an  English  city  which  was  visited 
with  a  serious  misfortune,  whereby  multitudes  of  the 
poorer  classes  were  put  to  great  hardship  and  distress.  A 
large  public  fund  was  at  once  subscribed  to  meet  the  im- 
mediate need,  and  the  administrators  of  the  fund  were 
faced  with  the  problem  of  how  the  money  should  be  dis- 
tributed, and  that  immediately.  It  became  at  once  appar- 
ent that  the  Church  of  England  alone  possessed  in  full 
working  order  the  required  organisation.  It  alone  had  a 
parish  system  with  district  visitors  apportioned  to  every 
group  of  houses  in  the  poorer  parts  of  the  town  —  officers, 
that  is  to  say,  already  cognisant  of  the  circumstances  of 
practically  every  poor  family  in  the  afflicted  area.  They, 
and  they  only,  could  efficiently  administer  the  relief,  and 
to  them  the  duty  was  assigned,  with  the  unanimous  con- 
sent of  the  representatives  of  all  the  denominations  who 
had  together  co-operated  to  raise  the  fund.  Of  course  all 
sects  helped  in  the  distribution,  but  the  active  distributing 
agency  was  and  had  to  be  the  parish  workers  of  the  Church 
of  England. 

133 


The   Crowd   in    Peace   and   War 

The  most  powerfully  organised  crowds  that  exist  are 
those  formed  by  their  executive  under  authority  delegated 
to  them  by  the  whole  body  of  a  people.  Such  are  the 
army,  the  navy,  the  police,  and  so  forth.  No  efficient 
army  elects  its  officers;  it  is  the  official  class  that  selects 
the  men.  Here  the  organisation  proceeds  from  above 
downward,  not  from  below  upward.  It  follows  that  here 
the  organic  relation  of  parts  to  the  whole  is  complete.  In 
theory  no  freedom  whatever  is  left  to  the  individual. 
Discipline  is  the  name  of  the  agency  by  which  this  organic 
unity  is  attained;  and  it  is  in  fact  discipline  that  makes 
the  difference  between  a  regiment  and  a  mob.  Drill  is 
merely  the  agency  by  which  discipline  is  inculcated,  and 
that,  not  the  shapely  performance  of  manoeuvres,  is  its 
true  purpose.  So  long  as  a  mob  is  filled  with  a  common 
impulse  it  may  act  as  a  unit,  but  the  moment  the  common 
impulse  wavers  the  mob  has  no  nerves  or  brain  to  bring 
it  back  into  corporate  integrity.  Discipline  is  the  means 
whereby  nerves  are  given  to  a  crowd,  enabling  it  to  be 
under  the  direction  of  a  single  brain.  A  disciplined  crowd 
obeys  and  cannot  help  obeying  its  official  leader  and  his 
official  subordinates  whoever  they  may  be.  An  unorgan- 
ised crowd  only  follows  a  hypnotising  crowd-compeller 
or  crowd-exponent. 

Discipline  inevitably  begets  rank.  Only  where  organ- 
isation is  low  does  equality  actually,  not  merely  theoreti- 
cally, exist.  The  whole  purpose  of  military  organisation 
is  to  group  units  together  under  the  direction  of  superiors 
of  successive  ranks,  and  thereby  to  substitute  for  mere 
blind  crowd-instincts  the  directing  brain  of  an  individual. 

When  two  armies  join  in  battle  the  object  of  each  is  not 

134 


Crowd -Organisation 

the  mere  slaughter  of  the  other's  units  but  the  destruction 
of  its  organisation,  which,  if  accomplished,  turns  the 
defeated  body  from  an  organised  collectivity  into  a  mob, 
it  being  universally  true  that  a  mob  in  the  presence  of  a 
disciplined  force  is  a  thing  impotent,  terror-stricken,  and 
incapable  of  resistance. 

Whilst  the  units  of  an  army  are  thus  seen  to  be,  in  the 
main  except  under  special  circumstances,  without  initiative 
and  altogether  subordinate  and  obedient  to  their  officers, 
no  such  complete  abnegation  of  individuality  is  called  for 
in  turn  from  them.  Every  officer  in  relation  to  his  supe- 
riors no  wise  differs  from  the  men  in  respect  of  submission 
to  orders  and  completeness  of  discipline;  but  an  officer 
in  relation  to  the  men  he  commands  can  avail  himself  of 
all  the  powers  of  leadership,  of  crowd-compulsion,  which 
he  is  capable  of  wielding.  For  over  and  above  the  disci- 
pline which  makes  men  obey  orders  there  is  in  an  army, 
as  much  as  in  any  other  crowd,  the  capacity  for  that  kind 
of  high  enthusiasm  which  enables  individuals  to  act  under 
its  compelling  influence,  as  without  it  they  could  never 
have  acted.  Real  commanders  of  men  are  those  who, 
whether  they  be  subalterns  or  generals,  are  able  to  raise 
this  heat  of  passion  in  their  men  and  thus  intensify  their 
power  individually  and  collectively  many  fold.  It  is  for 
this  reason  that,  as  Kinglake  observed,  the  harangues 
which  seem  to  touch  soldiers  do  not  often  embody  a  new 
and  lofty  conception,  but  utter  some  thought  which  comes 
within  the  reach  of  all.  Thus  by  merging  each  man's  emo- 
tion in  the  aggregate  feeling  of  the  regiment,  the  brigade, 
or  the  army,  they  make  opinion  set  one  way  with  all  the 
volume  and  weight  which  can  be  given  to  it  by  a  multitude 

135 


The   Crowd  in    Peace   and   War 

of  human  souls  when  they  bend  their  whole  forces  in  one 
direction. 

Where  a  crowd  is  to  be  organised  to  accomplish  a  fixed 
and  definite  result  through  the  employment  of  physical 
force  in  the  ultimate  resort,  there  is  no  other  type  of  organi- 
sation so  efficient  as  the  military.  This  is  why  the  organi- 
sation of  political  parties  approximates  more  and  more 
closely  to  the  military  form  in  proportion  as  party-aims 
become  definite  and  narrow,  and  the  intention  is  to  give 
effect  to  them  even  by  force  if  possible.  Thus  the  Irish 
Home  Rule  Party,  which  aimed  at  attaining  one  result, 
and  that  simple,  definite,  and  by  all  its  adherents  well 
understood,  before  it  had  been  long  in  existence  came  to 
approximate  to  the  military  form  under  the  able  direction 
of  Mr.  Parnell.  In  theory  indeed  the  party  elected  its 
leaders,  but  in  practice  the  leader  selected  all  the  officials 
of  the  party.  In  practice  also  the  rank  and  file  were  under 
severe  discipline  and  disobeyed  the  orders  of  their  leaders 
at  their  own  peril,  even  peril  of  life.  No  other  such  dis- 
ciplined political  party  has  in  modern  days  existed  in  Great 
Britain,  nor  has  any  ever  had  the  efficiency  or  maintained 
over  so  long  a  period  the  singleness  of  its  aim.  This  was 
because  Mr.  Parnell  was  not  merely  a  crowd-compeller  of 
exceptional  force,  but  because  he  likewise  possessed  in  a 
high  degree  the  genius  for  crowd-organisation,  and  so  im- 
pressed his  system  upon  the  body  of  his  supporters  that, 
even  when  he  himself  lost  control,  the  party  he  had 
shaped  regained  its  equilibrium,  like  a  disturbed  gyroscope, 
and  continued  to  revolve  about  the  axis  he  had  fixed  for  it. 


136 


CHAPTER  X 
GOVERNMENT  AND  THE  CROWD 

IN  the  preceding  chapter  it  was  necessary  to  encroach 
somewhat  upon  the  subject  with  which  we  have  now 
to  deal,  seeing  that  Government  is  an  essential  part 
of  the  organisation  of  a  national  crowd,  and  may  be  said 
to  resemble  the  skeleton  of  the  whole  structure.  It  is 
obvious  that  man,  the  individual,  will  regard  govern- 
ment differently  from  his  twofold  point  of  view:  as  a 
crowd-unit,  and  as  an  independent  living  creature.  Simi- 
larly the  governing  body  or  sovereign  may  regard  the 
governed  from  the  same  two  points  of  view,  as  a  public 
or  as  a  multitude  of  individuals.  We  have  had  expe- 
rience of  legislation  intended  to  promote  directly  the 
well-being  of  individuals,  and  of  other  legislation  which 
regarded  only  classes.  Finally  the  power  which  govern- 
ments wield  and  by  which  they  impose  their  will  upon  a 
people  may  be  supplied  by  organised  crowds  or  by  the 
assent  of  a  multitude  of  unorganised  individuals.  These 
general  considerations  will  suffice  to  suggest  what  large 
questions  are  opened  when  we  propose  to  discuss  the 
interrelations  of  crowds  and  governing  individuals  or 
bodies. 

Broadly  speaking,  the  governments  of  the  peoples  of 
the  world  from  the  beginning  till  now  may  be  divided 
into  two  classes:    Kingdoms  and  Crowddoms.     In  the 

137 


The    Crowd   in    Peace   and  War 

one  individuals  ruled;  in  the  other  public  opinion.  It 
matters  not  how  the  King  be  chosen  or  obtain  his 
office,  whether  by  birth,  by  murder,  intrigue,  or  revolu- 
tion, by  any  of  the  many  forms  called  of  right  divine,  or 
by  election  or  selection.  I  shall  call  that  man  in  every 
case  a  king  who  exercises  his  individual  volition  as  a  ruler 
over  a  crowd.  Kingdoms  and  Crowddoms  are  both  very 
ancient  forms,  and  one  is  not  necessarily  older  than  the 
other;  for,  though  throughout  the  ancient  and  mediaeval 
worlds  the  headship  of  almost  every  state  except  a  very 
few  was  held  by  an  individual  who  looked  like  a  king,  it 
not  infrequently  happened  that  he  was  only  the  executive 
officer  of  public  opinion  and  had  little  or  no  power  of 
imposing  his  own  individual  will  on  the  people  he  was 
supposed  to  rule. 

Writers  upon  theories  of  government  have  sometimes 
taken  the  liberty  of  transporting  themselves  and  their 
readers  into  unrecorded,  prehistoric  times,  where  by  aid 
of  imagination  alone  they  have  described  how  government 
arose,  based  upon  "social  contract"  and  other  the  like 
pictured  foundations.  Without  attempting  any  such 
leap  into  the  dark  unknown  past,  it  may  be  permissible 
to  inquire  what  would  be  the  needs  of  a  number  of  inde- 
pendent individuals  unlinked  to  one  another  by  any  laws 
or  agreements  but  living  within  range  of  one  another. 
Clearly  they  would  be  twofold :  the  need  for  co-operative 
protection  and  co-operative  action.  By  uniting  together 
they  could  provide  protection  for  the  persons  and  prop- 
erty of  all,  at  far  less  inconvenience  and  labour  than 
each  household  would  have  to  suffer  or  employ  to  safe- 
guard itself  against  all  comers.     By  co-operation  again 

138 


Government  and   the   Crowd 

not  only  warlike  attack  but  various  forms  of  labour  can 
be  more  efficiently  accomplished  and  at  less  cost;  and 
some  works,  such  as  irrigation,  can  only  thus  be  accom- 
plished at  all.  Both  for  common  protection  and  for  ele- 
mentary forms  of  common  enterprise  the  organisation 
required  is  of  the  type  known  as  military,  and  a  military 
organisation  can  be  most  easily  and  quickly  accomplished 
and  afterwards  maintained,  under  the  direction  of  a 
single  head  or  king.  But  a  crowd  has  already  to  possess 
a  common  feeling  before  it  can  thus  be  organised,  and  the 
common  feeling  makes  it  conscious  of  and  interested  in 
itself,  as  all  crowds  are  and  must  be.  Where  public 
opinion  exists  and  common  emotions  are  felt,  ideals  take 
shape;  and  the  body  politic  has  a  life  of  its  own,  a  life 
longer,  larger,  and  quite  different  in  kind  from  the  life 
of  the  individuals  who  collectively  and  successively 
compose  it. 

To  travel  down  the  long  course  of  history  sorting  out 
Kingdoms  and  Crowddoms  would  be  an  interesting  but 
a  lengthy  adventure.  The  reader  will  easily  perceive  for 
himself  that  in  many  an  early  patriarchal  system  of  gov- 
ernment the  power  of  tribal  opinion  was  very  strong; 
that  many  a  priest-king  (of  whom  instructive  and  enter- 
taining details  may  be  read  in  Sir  James  Frazer's  "Golden 
Bough")  had  little  individual  authority;  and  that,  long 
before  any  definitely  republican  form  of  government  had 
been  devised,  there  existed  many  a  little  state  in  which 
the  real  source  of  authority  was  not  the  will  of  an  indi- 
vidual but  the  desire  of  the  crowd. 

All  this  follows  from  the  twofold  nature  of  man,  the 
gregarious   and   the   non-gregarious   attitudes   which   he 

139 


The   Crowd  in    Peace   and   War 

assumes  toward  his  fellows  according  as  circumstances 
impel  him.  Where  people  live  in  close  proximity  to  one 
another,  as  in  a  town,  the  gregarious  element  predomi- 
nates and  the  crowd  obtains  control.  Where  people  live 
in  scattered  homesteads,  crowd-qualities  lie  dormant 
within  them,  and  the  individual  is  content  in  the  main 
himself  to  look  after  his  own  interests.  This  is  still  true 
down  to  the  present  day.  Thus  Mr.  Mundella,  whose 
passion  was  the  development  of  a  democratic  system  of 
education  under  popular  or  crowd-control,  made  the 
following  significant  observation:  "Whilst,"  he  says,  "it 
"seems  almost  impossible  to  get  the  counties  to  levy  a 
"county  rate  for  technical  education,  the  municipal  bor- 
"oughs  within  the  county  are  fairly  willing  to  rate  them- 
"  selves  for  their  own  benefit,  and  the  smaller  urban 
"townships  have  eagerly  incurred  heavy  burdens  when 
"assured  that  they  themselves  would  reap  the  profit  of 
"their  expenditure.  We  have  here,  if  we  realise  it,  a 
"measure  of  the  areas  within  which  local  patriotism  in 
"educational  matters  is  effective  in  a  greater  or  less 
"degree."  This  is  really  a  priceless  passage,  every  sen- 
tence and  almost  every  phrase  of  which  would  afford 
subject  for  entertaining  analysis,  but  we  are  now  con- 
cerned only  with  the  observation  it  records,  to  wit  that  it 
is  in  towns,  where  people  are  congregated,  that  the  crowd- 
emotion  is  strong,  and  socialistic  measures  can  be  carried 
into  effect  with  public  assent;  but  in  the  country,  where 
people  live  at  some  distance  from  one  another,  public 
opinion  is  weak  and  socialistic  arrangements  are  unpopu- 
lar. That  is  why  recent  socialistic  legislation,  all  of  which 
is  begotten  in  towns  and  passed  into  law  by  town-represen- 

140 


Government   and   the   Crowd 

tatives  (speaking  broadly),  nowadays  usually  contains 
provisions  enabling  the  central  authority  to  impose  on 
recalcitrant,  mainly  country  authorities,  though  popularly 
elected,  the  necessity  of  carrying  into  effect  and  paying 
for  a  number  of  provisions  which  no  country  population 
would  ever  willingly  adopt. 

It  follows  therefore  that,  generally  speaking,  the  in- 
tensity of  the  crowd-spirit  is  proportioned  to  the  density 
of  the  population.  Where  economic  or  other  conditions 
bring  a  great  number  of  people  together  and  cause  them 
to  live  in  close  proximity  to  one  another,  there  the  indi- 
vidual tends  to  be  merged  into  a  crowd;  there  the  crowd 
becomes  conscious  of  its  separate  existence,  its  needs  and 
desires  other  than  those  of  the  individuals  composing  it, 
and  presently  of  its  power  to  coerce  the  individual  and 
make  him  labour  and  pay,  not  only  for  himself  and  his 
family,  but  also  for  the  so-called  common  good.  It  was 
in  the  ancient  city  states  that  crowd-dominion  first  openly 
and  plainly  took  shape.  It  was  in  them  that  the  indi- 
vidual ruler  —  the  wise  man,  the  strong  man,  the  typical 
king  —  was  first  openly  tabooed  and  reduced  from  lord- 
ship to  service.  It  was  in  them  that  the  condition, 
quaintly  misnamed  Liberty,  was  first  proclaimed  —  the 
Liberty  for  example  by  possession  of  which  the  Athenians 
slew  Socrates!  In  the  Middle  Ages  it  was  in  the  towns 
that  this  same  Liberty  again  appeared,  and  power  passed 
once  more  into  the  hands  of  other  crowds  and  from  those 
of  various  kinds  of  kings,  the  difference  to  the  individual 
being  that  in  the  one  case  he  had  to  obey  the  orders  of 
some  sort  of  public,  in  the  other  the  orders  of  an  individ- 
ual ruler. 

141 


The   Crowd   in    Peace   and   War 

Of  course  when  the  public  rules,  there  is  a  probability 
that  the  individual  citizen  will  be  more  or  less  of  one 
mind  with  it,  seeing  that  it  is  a  crowd,  possessing  all  the 
qualities  that  we  have  seen  to  belong  to  a  crowd,  one  of 
which  is  the  infective  quality  of  the  general  opinion. 
Hence,  as  I  have  said,  the  individual  citizen  runs  a  good 
chance  of  being  infected  by  whatever  enthusiasm  moves 
the  crowd  and  therefore  of  desiring  what  the  public 
desires;  consequently  he  may  be  expected  to  find  himself 
in  agreement  with  the  general  tendency  of  legislation  and 
administration  when  that  is  determined  by  public  opinion. 
But  an  individual,  strong  and  independent  enough  to 
escape  crowd-dominance  over  his  mind,  and  able  to  form 
his  own  opinions  for  himself,  will  probably  be  out  of  har- 
mony with  public  opinion  all  or  most  of  the  time,  and  for 
him  and  all  like  him  (the  strongest  and  best  class  of  folk 
anywhere  and  at  any  time)  crowd-dominance  will  be  not 
less  but  much  more  objectionable  than  the  despotism  of 
a  king.  For  majority  rule,  that  is  to  say  crowd-rule, 
may  be  just  as  despotic  as,  and  often  has  been  more 
despotic  than,  the  rule  of  a  king  has  ever  been.  More- 
over crowd-representatives  openly  claim  the  right  so  to 
domineer,  as  kings  have  seldom  dared.  Here  is  a  plain 
statement  by  a  democratic  politician  of  modern  type,  the 
Hon.  Stafford  Bird  of  Tasmania.  "He  who  was  the 
"strongest,  who  could  bring  the  greatest  number  of  clubs 
"and  spears  in  stalwart  hands  into  the  field;  he  who 
"could  show  the  greatest  fighting  prowess,  who  could 
"best  handle  big  battalions  and  big  guns,  obtained  thereby 
"the  right  to  rule.  .  .  .  The  gospel  of  democracy  is  that 
"those  who  can  run  the  biggest  crowd  into  the  polling  booth 

U2 


Government   and   the   Crowd 

"shall  be  the  governors  of  the  country."  The  man  who 
does  not  share  the  emotions  of  the  majority  and  is  out  of 
harmony  with  public  opinion  needs  protection  from 
crowd-despotism  even  more  than  ever  a  subject  needed 
protection  from  the  power  of  a  king. 

Between  Kingdoms  and  Crowddoms  there  exists  the 
same  hostility  as  between  the  really  free  individual  and 
the  thoroughly  incorporated  crowd-unit,  and  the  like  is 
true  of  regal  despots  and  crowd-representatives.  Des- 
potic monarchs,  and  especially  the  wisest  and  ablest,  are 
naturally  out  of  sympathy  with  the  aspirations  of  a  crowd 
and  are  incredulous  of  the  value  and  efficiency  of  crowd- 
government.  If  any  man  was  "every  inch  a  king,"  it 
was  Bismarck,  who  really  ruled  his  country  with  a  power 
seldom  surpassed.  It  would  be  easy  to  cite  contemp- 
tuous and  hostile  opinions  of  his  as  to  the  merits  of 
crowd-government.  But  in  this  he  merely  carried  on  the 
traditional  and  indeed  necessary  attitude  of  kingship 
toward  crowd-domination,  which  never  received  a  nar- 
rower and  more  emphatic  expression  than'  in  the 
following  two  articles  of  the  Treaty  of  Verona  (22  Nov., 
1822),  wherein  are  authoritatively  set  forth  the  essen- 
tial points  of  difference  between  individual  and  crowd 
rule :  — 

"Article  I.  The  high  contracting  parties  being  con- 
vinced that  the  system  of  representative  government  is 
as  incompatible  with  monarchical  principles  as  the 
maxim  of  the  sovereignty  of  the  people  is  with  divine 
right,  engage  mutually,  and  in  the  most  solemn  manner, 
to  use  all  their  efforts  to  put  an  end  to  the  system  of 
representative  government,  in  whatever  country  it  may 

143 


The    Crowd   in    Peace   and   War 

"exist  in  Europe,  and  to  prevent  its  being  introduced  in 
"those  countries  where  it  is  not  yet  known. 

"Article  II.  As  it  cannot  be  doubted  that  the  liberty 
"of  the  press  is  the  most  powerful  means  used  by  the 
"pretended  supporters  of  the  rights  of  nations,  to  the 
"detriment  of  those  of  princes,  the  high  contracting 
"parties  promise  reciprocally  to  adopt  all  proper  meas- 
"  ures  to  suppress  it,  not  only  in  their  own  states,  but  also 
"in  the  rest  of  Europe." 

It  is  rather  strange  that  this  document,  which  singles 
out  the  danger  to  kingdoms  of  a  free  press,  makes  no 
mention  of  the  right  of  public  meeting;  for  these  are  the 
two  legs  on  which  Crowddoms  stand.  By  public  meet- 
ings and  popular  journalism  crowds  are  initiated  and 
built  up.  Where  public  meetings  are  effectively  prohib- 
ited and  there  is  no  free  press,  it  is  difficult,  almost  im- 
possible under  normal  conditions,  to  form  a  free  crowd 
even  locally,  and  without  a  free  popular  press  great 
national  crowds  or  parties  cannot  be  built  up.  Public 
meetings  and  a  popular  press  are  the  two  chief  sources  of 
crowd  power  and  the  two  chief  enemies  of  individual  rule. 

Government  is  representative  when  the  members  of  its 
executive  and  legislative  bodies  are  not  merely  elected 
by,  but  are  amenable  and  responsible  to,  public  opinion. 
When  that  is  the  case  the  crowd  really  rules.  This,  of 
course,  implies  that  the  members  of  the  government  are 
all  of  the  type  of  crowd-exponents  or  crowd-representa- 
tives above  discussed,  except  on  the  rare  occasions  when  a 
crowd-compeller  appears  and  for  the  time  acts  a  kingly 
part.  When  a  government,  of  whatever  shape,  produces 
a  crowd-compeller  for  its  head,  it  is  not,  so  long  as  he  is 

144 


Government   and    the   Crowd 

in  control,  really  representative;  for  public  opinion  then 
is  what  he  makes  it;  it  does  not  make  him.  The  normal 
representative  ruler  or  ruling  class  is  made  by  crowd- 
opinion  and  carries  out  a  crowd's  behests.  It  follows 
that  in  undiluted  representative  government  there  is  no 
place  for  reason,  none  for  science,  none  for  experience, 
none,  in  fact,  for  what  we  call  "experts."  Let  me  again 
cite  the  priceless  Mundella.  "There  is  talk,"  he  says, 
"of  the  need  of  experts.  Well,  the  proper  place  for  the 
"expert'  is  as  the  servant  and  not  the  master  of  the 
"public."  So  that  even  an  expert  in  governing  is  to  be 
excluded  from  government,  and  the  whole  business  is  to 
be  handed  over  to  a  body  of  representatives,  mainly 
amateurs.  Nothing  could  be  more  precise.  The  crowd  is 
moved  wholly  by  emotion,  the  expert  by  knowledge.  In 
crowd-rule  emotion  is  to  give  the  law.  Unless  reason  can, 
as  how  seldom  it  does,  translate  itself  into  an  emotional 
form  and  obtain  control  of  the  passion  of  the  crowd, 
reason  is  to  be  excluded  and  emotion  is  to  decide.  There 
is  no  escape  from  the  conclusion  that  crowd-government, 
government  by  public  opinion,  government  by  the  crowd 
for  the  crowd,  must  of  necessity  possess  all  the  qualities 
which  belong  to  the  crowd  and  which  we  have  discussed 
in  preceding  chapters.  It  must  be  intolerant,  it  must  be 
despotic  over  the  individual,  it  must  aim  at  reducing  all 
to  the  common  form  of  crowd  units,  it  must  be  passionate, 
variable,  now  keen  in  one  direction,  now  in  another.  It 
was  recorded  in  the  "  New  York  Nation  "  a  few  years  ago, 
how,  just  before  the  passage  of  the  Roosevelt  Railway  Bill, 
a  Senatorial  champion  of  it  was  privately  declaiming  on  its 

inevitability.     "I  tell  you,  sir,  that  when  the  American 

145 


The   Crowd   in    Peace   and   War 

"people  rise  in  their  might  and  demand  a  law  of  this  kind, 
"there  is  no  withstanding  their  will."  "Well,  Senator," 
asked  a  bystander,  "what  will  it  amount  to  after  it  is 
"passed?"  "Nothing  whatever,"  was  the  prompt  reply; 
"the  people  will  think  no  more  of  it,  and  will  turn  their 
"minds  to  the  next  agitation." 

Mr.  Keir  Hardie,  an  apostle  of  crowd-rule  pure  and 
simple,  once  explained  the  conditions  of  its  working. 
The  order  of  proceedings  was  first  to  promote  a  great  agita- 
tion for  some  measure  and  then  to  pass  it  wliile  the  hot 
fit  was  on.  He  said  that  if  by  means  of  delay,  caused  for 
example  by  a  second  chamber,  the  public  had  time  to  cool 
down,  it  frequently  changed  its  mind,  and  thus  you  lost 
your  measure.  Whether  the  measure  would  work, 
whether  the  country  would  like  it  when  it  had  got  it,  these 
considerations  did  not  occur  to  him  as  worth  notice. 
His  idea  was  merely  one  of  perpetual  agitation,  in  which 
the  crowd,  kept  at  boiling  point  with  enthusiasm  for 
first  this,  then  another,  so-called  reform,  should  maintain 
a  set  of  representatives  in  well-paid  office  to  pass  laws 
in  haste  giving  effect  to  these  successive  passions.  Thus 
picturing  the  process  of  crowd  legislation,  he  was  by  no 
means  without  understanding,  for  if  legislation  were 
ever  to  become  a  purely  crowd  business  it  is  only  thus 
that  it  could  be  carried  on.  The  crowd  cannot  act  except 
through  passion.  It  does  not  desire  to  act  at  all  until 
its  passions  are  raised.  That  is  most  easily  done  by 
exciting  its  greed  and  directing  its  hostility  against  some 
smaller  crowd  or  class,  which  is  the  favourite  field  of 
action  of  the  demagogue.  A  crowd  may  likewise  be 
inspired  with  enthusiasm  for  a  high  ideal.     In  an  im- 

146 


Government   and   the   Crowd 

perfect  world  its  good  and  evil  passions  are  usually  min- 
gled together.  Only  the  individual  can  proceed  by 
reason.     Crowd-rule  is  passion  enthroned. 

We  in  England  have  seen  examples  enough  in  our  own 
day  of  legislation  by  crowd-passion.  Who  that  lived 
through  it  does  not  remember  Mr.  Stead's  "Maiden  trib- 
ute" agitation,  and  the  accompanying  behaviour  of 
the  House  of  Commons?  The  passion  was  not  of  an 
ignoble  sort;  but,  as  for  the  legislation  it  produced,  little 
good  did  that  accomplish.  The  same  kind  of  phenomena 
accompanied  the  passage  of  the  Old  Age  Pensions  Bill. 
The  House  itself,  being  a  crowd,  is  liable  to  all  crowd 
diseases.  On  that  occasion  it  was  suddenly  swept  away 
by  a  wave  of  vaguely  sympathetic  enthusiasm,  under 
the  deluge  of  which  it  widened  the  scope  of  the  measure 
and  destroyed  many  of  its  sanest  limitations.  Those 
present  stated  that  the  House  was  carried  away  by  a 
passion  of  generous  emotion!  Nothing  could  better  indi- 
cate the  nature  of  a  crowd.  Members  were  voting  to 
give  away  other  people's  money  and  taking  to  themselves 
the  joy  and  the  credit  of  the  giving.  Those  were  mo- 
ments of  undiluted  crowd-rule,  but  they  were  exceptional. 
Even  to-day,  with  our  new  single-chamber  government, 
Great  Britain  is  not  subjected  to  purely  representative 
rulers.  The  crowd  strongly  influences  but  still  does  not 
wholly  direct  our  legislation  and  administration,  though 
its  exponents  are  loudly  clamouring  for  the  removal  of 
every  restraint  that  impedes  or  prevents  the  entire  liberty 
of  the  crowd  to  do  and  order  what  it  pleases. 

If  pure  Crowddoms  are  unsatisfactory  and  indeed  in 

the  long  run  impossible,  what  are  we  to  say  of  Kingdoms, 

147 


The   Crowd  in   Peace   and   War 

that  is  of  governments  not  formally  but  actually  directed 
by  a  personal  king?  It  is  generally  admitted  that  when 
he  is  a  truly  great  man,  gifted  with  crowd-compelling 
power,  endowed  with  wisdom  and  that  kind  of  instinct 
and  insight  that  make  his  choice  of  human  instruments 
generally  right,  no  form  of  government  is  better.  What, 
however,  in  the  long  experience  of  the  world  has  proved 
to  be  difficult,  perhaps  impossible  of  attainment,  is  the 
invention  of  a  method  for  discovering  and  raising  to  the 
headship  of  a  people  the  right  kind  of  man  for  kingship. 
I  say  "perhaps  impossible,"  for  such  is  the  generally 
received  opinion;  and  yet  the  Church  of  Rome  seems 
able  nowadays  to  provide  itself  with  a  succession  of 
excellent  Popes  to  whom  authority  can  be  safely  given, 
and  it  may  be  that  what  a  church  accomplishes  could  be 
accomplished  also  by  a  state.  Bees  breed  their  queens. 
The  world  has  tried  the  hereditary  principle  in  limited 
monarchy  with  tolerable  success,  but  it  has  never  called 
in  the  aid  of  science  to  direct  the  breeding  of  a  truly  royal 
race.  Perhaps  the  future  will  solve  the  problem  after  the 
way  of  the  bees.  At  present  that  method  is  outside 
practical  politics;  for,  if  the  perils  of  crowddom  are  not 
nowadays  clearly  realised,  every  one  knows  the  danger 
that  a  kingdom  may  develop,  like  the  ancient  Empire 
of  Byzantium,  into  a  splendid  and  selfish  despotism, 
with  an  orientalized  court,  a  decayed  public  spirit,  and 
stifled  individual  initiative.  The  corresponding  danger  in 
the  case  of  crowddom  has  yet  to  be  learnt  by  modern 
experience. 

For  our  present  purposes,  at  all  events,  it  suffices  that 

kingship  is  not  an  admissible  method  of  government  in 

148 


Government  and   the   Crowd 

the  modern  world.  Only  in  Russia  and  America  (in  the 
so-called  Republics  of  Central  and  South  America)  does 
it  really  exist;  to  some  extent  also  in  Germany.  The 
Czar,  however,  may  be  less  of  a  true  king  than  he  appears; 
as  to  the  future  of  German  Imperialism,  who  at  this  time 
of  writing  would  venture  to  prophesy?  South  America 
is  really  the  one  continent  where  true  monarchy  still 
flourishes,  the  Presidents  of  the  various  States  being  as 
a  rule  personally  supreme  and  not  in  fact  representative. 
This  tends  to  support  the  conclusion  that  kingship  is  only 
possible  in  politically  backward  regions,  and  especially 
those  in  which  the  population  is  scattered,  communica- 
tion difficult,  the  press  weak,  and  the  level  of  education 
low.  Where  ordinary  modern  conditions  prevail  the 
public  is  a  more  organised  crowd,  and  demands,  and  is 
able  to  obtain,  for  better  or  worse,  a  position  of  supremacy 
or  at  least  powerful  influence  in  the  government. 

It  has  been  the  good  fortune  of  Great  Britain  for  a  long 
series  of  years  to  have  produced,  and  lived  under,  a  con- 
stitution which  was  neither  a  kingdom  nor  a  crowddom, 
but  partook  of  the  nature  of  both.  The  crowd  obtained 
a  great  influence  in  the  government,  but  various  individ- 
uals altogether  independent  of  and  irresponsible  to  the 
public,  likewise  had  a  share  of  political  power.  It  was 
this  compromise  and  balance  between  the  power  of  the 
crowd  and  the  power  of  individuals  independent  of  it 
which  gave  to  Great  Britain,  during  a  century  or  more, 
an  almost  unique  position  in  the  world,  and  enabled  the 
British  Empire  to  grow  to  its  present  high  estate,  as 
under  pure  crowddom  or  pure  kingdom  it  could  not  have 
grown. 

149 


The   Crowd   in    Peace   and    War 

The  United  States  also,  by  the  wisdom  of  the  framers 
of  its  constitution,  provided  an  important  sphere  of 
influence  in  the  government  for  potent  individuals,  who, 
though  in  form  elected,  were  in  actual  fact  not  closely 
responsible  to,  nor  under  the  immediate  influence  of  the 
crowd.  Such,  for  instance,  were  and  still  to  some  extent 
remain  the  Federal  Senators,  and  it  is  to  the  Senate  of  the 
United  States  more  than  to  any  other  branch  of  its  govern- 
ment that  continuity  of  policy,  steadfastness  to  national 
tradition,  and  guarded  resistance  to  sudden  popular 
emotion  have  been  judged  due.  On  the  occasion  of  the 
Spanish-American  war  indeed  the  safeguard  failed,  and 
the  crowd,  lashed  to  fury  by  a  section  of  the  irresponsible 
yellow  press,  rushed  the  country  into  war,  when  there 
was  not  a  single  point  in  dispute  which  the  enemy  had 
not  officially  expressed  willingness  to  settle  to  the  satis- 
faction of  the  United  States  by  friendly  negotiation. 
This  is  the  kind  of  catastrophe  sooner  or  later  too  likely 
to  happen  when  the  crowd  dictates  foreign  policy.  Cor- 
responding ills  accompany  its  unfettered  actions  in  the 
areas  of  domestic  policy. 

Both  in  England  and  in  the  United  States  the  crowd 
during  recent  years  has,  under  the  guidance  of  its  ex- 
ponents and  representatives,  put  forward  claims  for  a 
larger  and  indeed  a  supreme  influence  upon  government, 
alike  in  legislation  and  administration.  It  has  in  many 
a  recent  enactment  invaded  the  area  properly  belonging 
to  courts-of-law  and  has  substituted  administrative  for 
legal  decisions  in  matters  concerning  the  rights  of  indi- 
viduals. Now  claims  are  openly  put  forward  for  the 
complete  dominance  of  the  crowd  in  all  parts  of  govern- 

150 


Government   and   the   Crowd 

merit,  and  if  the  steps  taken  in  that  direction  were  to  be 
pursued  much  further  both  Great  Britain  and  the  United 
States  would  become  advanced  Crowddoms. 

If  man  were  a  purely  gregarious  animal  this  order  of  gov- 
ernment might  suit  him  well  enough.  But  he  is  not;  not 
even  in  cities.  A  human  society  in  which  every  individual 
was  as  wholly  enslaved  to  the  crowd  as  is  a  bee  to  the  hive 
would  be  an  intolerable  despotism.  A  bee  all  its  life  long 
is  in  unbroken  slavery.  Every  act  of  its  life  is  done  for 
the  hive.  Its  passion  of  work  is  used  up  in  the  interests 
of  the  community,  and  that  not  even  mainly  of  the  living 
community  but  of  the  unborn  generation  that  is  to  follow 
its  own.  There  is  nothing  in  nature  so  horrible  as  the 
life  in  a  hive  of  bees.  Their  industry  is  a  veritable  night- 
mare of  self-abnegation,  generation  after  generation,  each 
for  the  next.  That  is  exactly  and  without  exaggeration 
the  kind  of  life  that  every  crowd  tends  to  try  to  generate 
among  its  members  and  to  impose  upon  them.  To  such 
slavery  mankind  will  not  long  submit,  for  in  the  long  run 
perhaps  the  most  vital  element  in  each  individual  is  his 
ultimate  and  keen  sense  of  his  own  separate  individuality, 
and  his  desire  to  realise  and  express  it.  Moreover  the 
higher  a  man  stands  in  character,  gifts,  and  acquired 
excellencies  of  knowledge  and  wisdom,  among  and 
above  his  fellows,  so  much  the  keener  is  his  sense  of 
differentiation  from  the  crowd,  and  so  much  the 
stronger  his  desire  to  escape  from  crowd  thralldom. 
As  it  is  the  ablest  men  that  are  thus  the  most  indi- 
vidual and  the  most  resentful  of  crowd-imposition,  and 
as  one  able  man  can  generally  outwit  a  crowd,  it  follows 

that  crowddoms  pure  and  simple  can  never  long  main- 

151 


The   Crowd  in    Peace   and   War 

tain  themselves  in  power  against  the  subtle  assaults  of 
individuals. 

Hence  in  a  stable  government  both  the  gregarious 
and  the  individualistic  nature  of  the  governed  units 
must  be  regarded,  and  therefore  both  crowd-sentiment 
and  independent  human  reason  must  find  their  spheres  of 
action  in  the  governing  body,  and  each  must  be  free  from 
the  control  of  the  other.  They  must  possess  co-ordinate 
authority.  Limited  crowddom  or  limited  monarchy 
alone  can  possess  stability,  because  only  they  correspond 
to  the  twofold  nature  of  man.  It  therefore  follows  that 
the  purpose  of  government  is  as  much  to  protect  the 
individual  from  the  tyranny  of  the  crowd  as  to  provide 
that  the  tendency  and  aim  of  both  legislation  and  ad- 
ministration shall  be  in  general  harmony  with  the  emo- 
tional direction  of  the  public,  not  indeed  at  this  or  that 
moment,  but  over  a  reasonably  extended  period  of  time. 

Nowadays  there  is  no  difficulty  in  providing  a  fit  and 
clear  means  of  expression  for  popular  emotion.  The  whole 
system  of  elections,  parties,  and  party  organisations,  has 
been  organised  to  that  end.  It  has  been  carried  far,  but 
perhaps  not  yet  far  enough.  In  former  days  (to  confine 
our  attention  to  Great  Britain)  the  House  of  Commons 
did  not  even  mainly  consist  of  true  representatives  of  the 
public.  Its  members  were  to  a  large  degree  independent 
of  public  opinion.  Under  such  circumstances  the  House 
of  Commons  could  be  a  deliberative  assembly.  Inde- 
pendent gentlemen,  such  as  many  members  were  in 
former  days,  under  a  loose  party  system,  fall  naturally 
into  groups,  and  it  was  by  negotiations  between  these 

groups  that  majorities  were  built  up  or  destroyed.     But 

152 


Government   and   the   Crowd 

now  the  House  tends  to  become  purely  representative  of 
popular  feeling,  and  every  security  that  party  discipline 
can  invent  is  being  taken  to  maintain  the  closest  possible 
connexion  between  the  emotions  of  the  constituencies  and 
those  of  the  House  of  Commons,  at  all  events  toward  the 
time  of  a  General  Election.  As  that  recedes  into  the 
distance  the  constituencies  may  change  their  wishes  and 
the  House  may  and  often  does  fail  to  change  with  them. 
In  so  far  as  that  is  the  case  it  fails  in  the  function  which 
it  is  now  supposed  to  fulfil.  Every  enlargement  of  the 
franchise  and  every  shortening  of  the  length  of  time  be- 
tween General  Elections  would  tend  to  make  the  repre- 
sentative chamber  more  and  more  exactly  what  it  is 
supposed  to  be.  Universal  male  and  female  suffrage  and 
annual  general  elections  are  logical  developments  of  the 
widely  current  representative  theory,  nor,  so  long  as  the 
influence  and  power  of  the  crowd  is  limited  by  a  co-ordi- 
nate authority,  is  there  any  deadly  objection  to  be  taken 
to  such  reforms.  Indeed,  if  public  opinion  is  to  be  one 
of  the  main  factors  in  government  and  legislation,  it  is 
obviously  desirable  that  the  body  whose  purpose  it  is  to 
express  that,  should  in  fact  express  it  immediately  and 
clearly. 

But  exactly  in  proportion  to  the  power  of  expression 
thus  given  to  the  popular  will  should  be  the  power  of 
restraint  and  direction  provided  for  individual  wisdom, 
experience,  and  foresight.  The  crowd  possesses  none  of 
these  qualities.  It  merely  desires.  It  does  not  follow 
that  its  desires  are  attainable  or  attainable  at  once. 
Granted  that  the  direction  of  legislation  and  administra- 
tion must  be  in  general  harmony  with  the  public  will; 

153 


The   Crowd   in    Peace   and   War 

the  time,  the  form,  and  all  the  details  of  measures  intended 
to  give  effect  to  that  will,  must  be  matter  for  rational 
discussion  and  decision ;  that  is  to  say  they  must  for  those 
purposes  be  removed  from  the  purview  of  the  crowd  and 
therefore  of  its  representatives. 

In  the  past  this  was  accomplished  by  the  aid  of  a  second 
chamber,  the  members  of  which  were  not  elected  and 
were  therefore  independent  of  crowd-control.  As  crowd- 
exponent  speakers  were  fond  of  asserting,  members  of  the 
House  of  Lords  represented  only  themselves.  This  was 
in  fact  the  very  raison  d'etre  and  merit  of  their  existence. 
By  the  weakness  and  carelessness  of  successive  adminis- 
trations or  successive  generations  the  House  of  Lords  was 
allowed  to  run  to  seed.  No  care  was  taken  to  purge  it 
of  the  unfit,  none  to  secure  that,  where  heredity  provided 
an  entrance  to  the  assembly,  the  marriages  upon  which 
heredity  depended  should  be  of  a  satisfactory  character. 
The  body  of  peers  was  allowed  to  grow  too  big  and  ulti- 
mately the  House  ceased  to  perform  satisfactorily  the 
business  which  was  its  function,  and  worst  of  all  came 
to  lose  faith  in  itself. 

When  the  concurrent  authority  of  the  House  of  Lords, 
side  by  side  with  the  House  of  Commons,  was  done  away 
with,  it  might  be  supposed  that  crowddom  would  have 
come.  But,  though  a  long  step  was  taken  towards  it, 
there  remained  certain  limitations  to  crowd-power  which 
still  have  force.  First  there  was  the  whole  mass  of  exist- 
ing statute  law  and  the  body  of  judges  who  administered 
it  and  who  are  not  as  a  rule  amenable  to  political  pres- 
sure. The  liberated  crowd-chamber,  as  I  have  said, 
proceeded    to    undermine    this,    the     main     protection 

154 


Government  and   the   Crowd 

which  individuals  possess  against  crowd-tyranny;  but 
it  will  take  a  long  time  to  socialise  the  law-courts, 
and  before  that  has  been  accomplished  reaction  may  be 
expected. 

A  more  subtle  barrier  against  complete  crowd-control 
had  also  been  built  up  almost  unobserved,  to  wit  the 
privacy  of  Cabinet  deliberations.  When,  before  the 
Reform  Bills,  the  House  of  Commons  was  really  a  de- 
liberative assembly,  the  Cabinet  was  a  small  and  relatively 
weak  executive  Committee.  But  with  the  increased  size 
of  the  nation,  the  growing  complexity  and  multitudi- 
nousness  of  its  life  and  activities,  and  the  intrusion  of 
popular  control  into  every  sphere,  the  organs  of  govern- 
ment multiplied.  New  offices  were  formed,  new  Minis- 
tries called  into  existence,  and  so  the  Cabinet  increased 
in  size.  In  fact  that  change  took  place  which  we  have 
discussed  in  earlier  chapters.  The  Cabinet  grew  to 
be  itself  a  small  crowd.  From  being  a  mere  Committee 
it  became  an  assembly,  and  what  is  more  important  a 
secret  assembly.  As  long  as  it  was  only  an  executive 
committee  the  secrecy  of  its  deliberations  was  normal; 
but  when  it  became  an  assembly  this  same  secrecy  as- 
sumed a  novel  importance.  For  now,  though  a  Minister 
when  he  appears  in  his  place  in  Parliament  is  constrained 
to  express  opinions  harmonious  with  those  of  his  party 
all  over  the  country,  in  the  secret  deliberations  of  the 
Cabinet  he  is  under  no  such  compulsion.  It  is  thus  not 
merely  possible  but  certain  that  within  the  body  of  the 
Cabinet  itself  parties  will  form,  and  as  the  collective  deci- 
sions of  a  Cabinet  must  be  made  to  appear  unanimous  to 
the  onlooking  crowd,  it  becomes  possible  for  one  party 

155 


The   Crowd   in    Peace   and   War 

within  the  Cabinet  to  dominate  the  rest,  constraining  all 
to  follow  its  dictation. 

It  may  be  questioned  whether  in  point  of  fact  the  Cabi- 
net nowadays  does  not  efficiently  perform  many  of  the 
functions  of  a  second  chamber,  or  at  least  whether  it  does 
not  contain  within  itself  the  germs  of  a  body  destined 
under  stress  of  circumstances  to  perform  that  function. 
Possibly  it  might  be  argued  that  the  growing  hostility 
which  could  be  traced  in  recent  decades  between  the 
Cabinet  and  the  House  of  Lords  —  and  that  not  alone  in 
the  case  of  Liberal  Cabinets  —  was  due  to  the  jealousy 
bound  to  develop  between  two  rival  bodies,  both  endeav- 
ouring to  perforin,  but  interfering  with  one  another  in  per- 
forming, overlapping  functions. 

We  have  heard  much  about  the  reformed  Second  Cham- 
ber which  is  some  day  to  replace  the  House  of  Lords. 
There  is  one  obvious  intention  with  regard  to  it:  it  is  not 
to  be  able  to  rival  or  overbear  any  Cabinet.  Moreover  it 
is  to  be  made  responsible  to  public  opinion.  It  is  to  be 
crowd-ridden  like  the  House  of  Commons.  It  is  to  con- 
sist of  crowd-exponents  and  representatives  subject  to 
re-election  by  some  kind  of  popular  constituencies.  Such 
a  second  chamber  would  of  course  be  superfluous.  It  is 
the  business  of  the  House  of  Commons  to  express  the 
public  will,  and  no  second  body  is  required  for  that  func- 
tion. The  only  use  for  a  second  chamber  is  to  express 
the  mind  and  intelligence  which  resides  in  individuals  but 
which  is  intrinsically  absent  from  all  crowds,  constitu- 
encies, publics,  or  by  whatever  name  they  pass.  To  invent 
and  set  up  a  second  crowd-chamber  would  be  mere  super- 
fluity.    But  if  one  were  to  be  created,  the  only  result  that 

156 


Government   and    the    Crowd 

could  follow  is  the  same  that  would  in  any  case  follow  if 
the  present  constitutional  arrangements  continued.  The 
Cabinet  would  acquire  the  determining  qualities  proper 
to  a  second  chamber.  It  would  continue  to  grow  in  size 
and  it  would  inevitably  break  up  into  groups.  It  would 
jealously  protect  the  secrecy  of  its  deliberations,  and  it 
might  finally  obtain,  what  it  already  grasps  at,  complete 
control  alike  over  administration  and  legislation.  The 
popular  chamber  beside  it,  tossed  hither  and  thither  by 
every  wind  and  current  of  mutable  public  opinion,  and 
incapable  of  performing  deliberative  functions,  would 
steadily  lose  power,  and  the  government  of  Great  Britain 
would  become  a  more  or  less  elective  oligarchy,  strong 
enough  to  hold  the  popular  chamber  under  its  thumb. 

We  are  thus  led  to  the  conclusion  that  the  proper  func- 
tion of  organised  public  opinion,  that  is  to  say  the  opinion 
of  the  national  crowd,  is  to  inspire  but  not  to  direct  legis- 
lation. The  public  feels  where  the  shoe  pinches.  If  the 
body  politic  suffers  from  disease,  it  will  know  that  it  is 
suffering  though  it  may  seldom  be  able  to  diagnose  its  own 
ailment.  The  limits  between  emotion  and  reason  are 
not  hard  to  draw  for  practical  purposes,  and  they  define 
the  areas  within  which  the  crowd  and  all  its  exponents 
and  representatives  can  properly  act  and  those  wherein 
only  [individual  intelligence  can  operate.  But  although, 
therefore,  in  any  system  of  government  which  takes 
account  of  the  actual  and  unchangeable  facts  of  the  nature 
of  man,  the  impulse  toward  legislation  will  normally  be 
given  by  the  public  and  the  form  which  legislation  takes 
will  be  the  work  of  men  of  individual  ability,  entirely  inde- 
pendent of  the  crowd,  there  yet  remains  one  further  func- 

157 


The   Crowd   in    Peace   and   War 

tion  which  the  public  may  be  organised  to  perform  —  to  it 
may  be  allotted  the  ultimate  decision  as  to  acceptance  or 
rejection  of  a  completed  measure.  The  three  readings 
which  a  bill  receives  in  each  House  of  Parliament  corre- 
spond to  the  three  phases  through  which  every  proposed 
measure  ought  to  pass.  In  the  first  stage  the  principle 
of  the  measure  should  be  stated  and  accepted.  This 
stage  is  in  fact  carried  through  by  the  public  press,  and 
nowadays  no  great  popular  measure  ever  comes  before 
Parliament  at  all  until  it  has  passed  this  great  and  benefi- 
cent public  first  reading.  With  the  second  stage  —  the 
second  reading  and  Committee  —  the  public  ought  not 
really  to  be  concerned  at  all.  Here  is  the  proper  area  of 
activity  for  experts,  lawyers,  and  men  of  special  intelli- 
gence. When  the  measure  has  taken  form  under  the  hands 
of  these,  what  should  hinder  its  direct  submission  to  the 
public  by  what  is  called  the  Referendum,  for  final  accept- 
ance or  rejection?  Politicians,  of  course,  do  not  like  the 
Referendum,  knowing  as  they  do  that  most  great  measures 
now  scrambled  through  Parliament  would  be  rejected  by 
the  country.  The  famous  Budget  of  1911  was  in  fact  thus 
rejected,  though  enough  members  who  had  been  returned 
to  vote  against  it  were  induced  by  negotiations,  which  need 
not  now  be  discussed,  to  vote  for  and  thus  to  carry  it. 
The  Irish  Home  Rule  Bill  would  have  been  rejected,  so 
would  the  Insurance  Bill,  and  so  possibly  would  the  Bill 
for  Welsh  Disestablishment.  Politicians  of  present-day 
type  cannot  therefore  be  expected  to  desire  the  introduc- 
tion of  the  Referendum.  "The  office  of  the  Senate," 
says  Harrington,  "is  not  to  be  commanders  but  counsellors 
"of  the  people."     They  can  only  fulfil  that  function  if  the 

158 


Government   and   the   Crowd 

final  voice,  the  ultimate  Yea  or  Nay,  be  not  theirs  but  the 
people's.  Such  was  the  ancient  Roman  theory  of  legisla- 
tion expressed  in  the  words  "The  Senate  has  resolved,  the 
"people  have  decreed."  In  most  modern  states  Parlia- 
ment both  resolves  and  decrees,  whereas  if  Parliament 
really  and  truthfully  reflects  its  constituent  crowd  it  can- 
not properly  "  resolve,"  whilst  if  it  does  not  so  reflect  it, 
then  Parliament  has  no  kind  of  right  to  "decree"  —  man 
being  the  twofold  creature  that  throughout  these  pages  we 
have  postulated. 

In  some  Swiss  cantons  the  public  has  retained  the 
right  of  final  direct  decision  as  to  the  passing  or  rejecting 
of  legislative  measures.  This  decision  is  generally  given 
by  aid  of  the  ballot-box,  but  in  some  small  cantons  such 
as  Appenzell  the  actual  body  of  voters  is  brought  together 
at  one  place  and  votes  in  person,  as  they  may  be  seen 
doing  in  the  interesting  photograph  here  reproduced.1 
The  unanimity  which  generally  characterises  a  crowd 
physically  assembled  in  one  place,  after  it  has  had  time  to 
become  conscious  of  itself,  is  clearly  apparent  even  in  this 
small  photograph.  The  submission  of  measures  for  final 
approval  to  the  whole  body  of  voters  in  a  country  as  large 
as  the  United  States  is  a  mere  matter  of  machinery,  quite 
possible  to  organise  under  modern  conditions.  Legisla- 
tion thus  achieved  after  full  debate  and  final  public  vote 
would  have  a  binding  force  beyond  legislation  passed  by 
any  representative  assembly. 

If  it  be  contended  that  a  representative  body,  resting  on 
a  wide  enough  franchise  and  renewed  at  sufficiently  fre- 

1  I  am  indebted  to  the  Swiss  periodical  "Heimatschatz"  for  permis- 
sion to  publish  this  photograph. 

159 


The   Crowd   in    Peace   and   War 

quent  intervals,  should  be  in  such  close  touch  with  the 
great  public  as  to  render  any  other  direct  appeal  to  the 
people  superfluous,  the  answer  is  that  under  the  existing 
party  system,  at  any  rate,  this  is  evidently  not  the  case; 
for,  whereas  the  whole  body  of  the  people  might  be 
expected  to  accept  some  measures  and  reject  others  pro- 
ceeding alike  from  a  single  party  government,  a  body 
of  representatives,  responding  to  the  party  whip,  as 
supposed  agent  of  the  public,  would  be  sure  to  accept  or 
reject  all. 

There  is,  of  course,  a  quantity  of  minor  legislation  in 
which  the  great  public  is  not  interested  and  about  which 
it  could  not  be  consulted.  Here,  for  instance,  is  the  record 
of  the  doings  of  the  Legislature  at  Washington  during  the 
Congress  that  closed  in  March,  1915.  30,053  bills  and 
joint  resolutions  were  introduced:  in  the  Senate  7,751  bills 
and  245  joint  resolutions,  an  average  of  more  than  83 
for  each  Senator;  in  the  House  21,616  bills  and  441  joint 
resolutions,  or  an  average  of  more  than  50  for  each  Rep- 
resentative or  delegate.  700  laws  were  enacted  —  only  a 
little  over  2  per  cent  of  those  introduced.  417  of  these 
enactments  were  public  laws,  283  were  private  measures. 
It  is  obvious  that  such  a  flood  of  legislation  must  pass 
through  a  representative  conduit  and  cannot  by  any 
possibility  be  submitted  by  Referendum  to  the  judgment 
of  the  whole  people.  For  great  measures  of  national 
reform,  which  affect  the  structure  of  the  nation  and  are 
in  fact  constitutional  innovations,  a  legislative  chamber 
has  no  great  value,  except  to  register  the  will  of  the  people 
and  provide  opportunity  for  expert  individual  minds  to  set 

forth  that  will  in  a  form  adapted  to  accomplish  so  much 

160 


Government  and   the   Crowd 

of  the  national  desires  as  under  the  circumstances  of  the 
day  can  be  accomplished.  But  for  minor  and  private  bill 
legislation  and  to  keep  an  eye  on  the  national  expenditure 
and  the  executive  actions  of  government  a  representative 
body  is  obviously  needed,  and  the  business  of  that  body 
is  to  reflect  truthfully  and  immediately  what  is  actually  the 
public  opinion  of  the  moment.  Such  a  body  has  nothing 
to  do  with  individual  opinion,  nothing  to  do  with  reason. 
When  brought  together  it  ought  itself  to  be  a  crowd,  the 
exact  image  of  the  nation,  only  on  a  smaller  scale.  As  a 
crowd  it  can  never  usefully  deliberate.  It  can  only  in- 
spire, accept,  or  reject,  but  its  inspiration  and  its  de- 
cisions may  be  concerned  with  matters  too  small  in 
themselves  and  too  numerous  to  be  submitted  to  the 
whole  public. 

If  the  representative  body  is  to  reflect  truthfully  the 
emotion  of  the  public  —  the  great  national  crowd  —  it 
follows  that  each  individual  member  should  in  turn 
represent  a  crowd  also,  that  is  to  say  should  represent 
one  of  the  separately  existing  crowds  of  which  the  nation 
is  built  up.  Such  crowds  cannot  be  called  into  existence 
by  a  stroke  of  the  pen.  They  exist  because  historical, 
economic,  and  industrial  conditions  have  fashioned  them. 
Cities  are  limited  crowds;  small  towns  are  crowds;  coun- 
try districts  that  have  been  separate  units  for  a  long  time 
are  crowds.  One  cannot  alter  these  facts.  To  cut  the 
country  up  by  a  long-division  sum  into  equal  electoral 
areas  is  not  to  create  so  many  new  and  separate  crowds. 
I  will  cite  as  a  single  small  example  the  adjoining  cities, 
Rochester  and  Chatham.  No  motorist  passing  along 
the  main  street,  continuous  through  both  of  them,  could 

161 


The    Crowd   in    Peace   and   War 

obtain  by  direct  observation  the  vaguest  idea  where  they 
divide.  By  every  visible  sign  they  are  one  city.  In 
fact,  however,  they  are  two,  with  different  historical 
pasts  and  wholly  different  municipal  character.  If  you 
were  to  cut  them  into  two  equal  electoral  areas,  giving 
a  part  of  Chatham  to  Rochester,  all  you  would  accom- 
plish would  be  the  certainty  of  failing  to  get  from  either 
the  true  expression  of  local  crowd-opinion.  The  same 
thing  is  true  if,  in  order  to  enlarge  the  voting  numbers 
of  a  town,  you  make  the  inhabitants  of  neighbouring 
country  areas  vote  as  of  the  town.  In  the  result  you 
get  neither  the  opinion  of  the  country  nor  that  of  the 
town.  There  is  nothing  in  the  nature  of  a  mean  or  aver- 
age to  be  arrived  at  between  the  two.  The  country 
crowd  has  one  set  of  emotions,  the  town  crowd  another. 
You  might  as  well  seek  the  average  taste  of  sugar 
and  salt. 

The  foolish  notion  that  anything  is  accomplished  by 
dividing  up  a  country  into  equal  electoral  areas,  arose  from 
the  false  idea  that  men  go  to  the  polling  booth  and  vote 
each  according  to  his  own  reasoned  idea  of  his  own  indi- 
vidual interests;  whereas  they  do  nothing  of  the  sort. 
Seeing  that  the  people  of  any  country  must  of  necessity, 
at  our  present  stage  of  evolution,  be  "mostly  fools,"  what 
would  be  the  value  of  their  reasoned  judgment  about 
anything?  "In  'Time  and  Tide,'  "  said  Ruskin,  "I 
"have  told  my  working-men  friends  frankly  that  their 
"opinions,  or  voices,  are  'not  worth  a  rat's  squeak,'  "  nor 
are  the  reasoned  opinions  of  any  save  a  very  few.  Voting, 
as  we  have  already  seen,  is  not  an  expression  of  individual 
reason  but  of  crowd-emotion,  and  the  foolish  are  as  likely 

162 


Government   and   the   Crowd 

as  the  wise,  perhaps  even  more  likely  than  the  wise,  to 
catch  a  fine  crowd-ideal.  Individual  opinion  has  so  small 
a  share  in  voting  as  to  be  negligible;  and  it  is  as  fortunate 
as  it  is  inevitable  that  it  should  be  so.  We  do  not  want 
an  average  of  foolish  opinions,  but  an  integration  of  popu- 
lar aspirations.  "Le  vote  de  chaque  individu,"  writes 
George  Sand,  "n'est  pas  le  vote  (by  which  she  means  the 
"aspiration)  de  tous.  La  veritable  adhesion  des  masses 
"n'existe  qu'a  la  condition  du  contact  des  hommes  reunis 
"en  assemblee,  s'eprouvant,  s'interrogeant,  se  livrant  les 
"uns  aux  autres,  s'engageant  par  la  publicite  des  debats 
"et  pouvant  echapper  par  la  aux  influences  etroites  de  la 
"famille  et  aux  suggestions  passageres  de  l'interet  per- 
sonnel." The  object  of  an  electoral  campaign  is  not 
merely  to  throw  up  a  set  of  representatives,  but  to  give 
singleness  and  clearness  to  the  crowd's  ideals,  to  make  the 
various  crowds  realise  and  concentrate  their  aims,  and 
in  the  fire  and  passion  of  the  time  to  transmit  their 
ideals  to  the  representatives  they  cast  up.  Such  single- 
ness of  purpose  seldom  abides  long  in  any  crowd,  but  the 
intention  of  crowd-organisation  is  to  prolong  it,  and  with  it 
the  vitality  of  the  crowd  itself. 

The  City  of  London  is  one  crowd,  the  City  of  Edin- 
burgh is  one  crowd,  the  county  of  Essex  is  a  crowd;  if 
you  want  the  national  crowd  distilled,  it  is  those  and  the 
like  actually  existing  component  crowds  that  must  be 
represented,  not  overlapping  sections  of  them.  It  follows 
that  the  old-fashioned  representation  by  counties  and 
boroughs  was  a  more  scientific  way  of  reflecting  public 
opinion  in  the  House  of  Commons  than  is  the  present 
half-and-half  system,  and  that  that  in  turn  is  preferable 

163 


The   Crowd  in   Peace  and  War 

to  a  system  of  constituencies  each  containing  the  same 
number  of  voters,  cut  out  of  the  country  at  random  with- 
out regard  to  its  pattern. 

It  should  be  remembered  that  the  emotional  complexion 
of  any  given  crowd  depends  little,  if  at  all,  upon  its  num- 
bers. The  civic  character  of  London,  New  York,  Phila- 
delphia, Washington,  and  smaller  cities  like  Bath  or 
Londonderry,  has  always  been  a  fairly  constant  quantity. 
They  change  little  from  one  decade  to  another.  Even 
when  a  city  increases  tenfold  by  steady  infiltration  of 
immigrants,  its  character  may  alter  little.  The  new- 
comers, if  they  come  as  detached  units,  quickly  receive 
the  local  tone  and  are  made  as  effective  agents  in  carrying 
on  the  local  spirit  as  persons  born  and  bred  in  the  place. 
It  is  only  when  a  great  mass  of  incomers  are  of  one  sort, 
possessing  a  strong  crowd-character  of  their  own  and  pre- 
serving it  by  contact  with  one  another,  that  a  totally  new 
spirit  may  be  introduced.  This  is  said  to  have  happened 
to  Boston  when  that  old  Puritan  and  characteristically 
New  England  city  was  submerged  under  a  flood  of  Irish,  in 
volume  sufficient  to  revolutionise  the  local  crowd-character. 

Thus  there  is  nothing  gained  by  splitting  up  integral 
local  crowds  into  sections  which  have  no  natural  separate 
existence;  on  the  contrary  the  representative  character 
of  their  representatives  is  weakened.  Should  London 
then  count  for  no  more  than  Londonderry  in  the  represen- 
tative chamber?  Of  course  not.  Every  one  realises  that 
the  weight  of  a  member  in  the  counsels  of  the  House  of 
Commons  is  greater  is  some  proportion  relative  to  the 
importance  of  the  constituency  that  returns  him,  and  if  the 
votes  of  members  counted  (as  they  do  in  some  Labour 

164 


Government   and   the   Crowd 

assemblies)  in  proportion  to  the  size  of  the  crowds  that 
returned  them,  the  desired  result  would  be  obtained,  with- 
out the  necessity  for  any  redistribution  bills  or  other 
gerrymandering  arrangements. 

It  has  been  asserted  that  "a  state  is  in  essence  a  great 
"joint-stock  company  with  unlimited  liability  on  the 
"part  of  the  shareholders."  The  analogy  will  not  hold 
except  in  a  time  of  war  for  national  existence,  and  even 
then  it  is  only  the  unlimited  liability  that  all  share.  A 
state  is  essentially  a  vast  crowd,  a  tremendous  human 
organism,  a  Leviathan  (to  use  the  metaphor  of  Hobbes). 
A  company  on  the  other  hand  is  not  a  crowd;  it  is  merely 
a  group  of  co-operating  individuals,  each  desirous  of  his 
own  profit  and  realising  that  that  can  only  in  the  special 
case  be  obtained  by  co-operating  with  others.  No  one 
inquires  as  to  the  character  of  his  fellow  shareholders. 
You  never  see  a  successful  company  moved  by  emotion 
even  when  assembled  in  general  meeting.  The  units  are 
not  united  by  emotion.  It  is  only  when  something  goes 
wrong  and  when  a  company  does  not  effect  its  purpose 
that  a  common  emotion  of  any  sort  arises  in  a  company 
meeting.  The  purpose  of  a  company  is  dividends.  The 
purpose  of  a  nation  is  the  pursuit  of  ideals.  Citizens  have 
to  make  their  living;  it  is  little  that  any  government  can 
do  to  help  them,  though  in  much  it  call  hinder.  Every 
country  pursues  its  ideals  collectively  rather  than  its  busi- 
ness. That  is  what  gives  dignity  to  the  great  crowds.  If 
it  were  not  so,  nations  would  only  be  great  beasts  of  a 
pernicious  character,  and  the  first  aim  of  civilisation 
would  have  to  be  to  break  them  up. 


165 


CHAPTER  XI 
LIBERTY  AND   FREEDOM 

THE  best  and  latest  of  all  dictionaries  of  the  English 
language  shows  how  the  words  I  have  written  at 
the  head  of  this  chapter  are  vaguely  used  to  carry- 
all sorts  of  different  and  even  incongruous  meanings. 
Slaves  longed  for  freedom,  dissenting  bodies  claimed  it, 
trades-unions  demanded  it,  subordinate  states  have  gone 
to  war  for  it,  but  the  freedom  or  liberty  aspired  to  by 
these  various  classes  is  far  from  being  one  condition.  For 
the  purposes  of  the  present  chapter  I  propose  to  dis- 
tinguish Liberty  from  Freedom  and  to  employ  each  word 
in  its  separate  meaning. 

The  ancient  condition  of  freedom  was  the  opposite  to 
that  of  bondage  or  slavery;  it  was  the  condition  of  an 
individual  who  could  decide  the  main  circumstances  of 
his  life  for  himself.  If  he  had  to  serve  some  master  for 
his  livelihood,  he  could  at  any  rate  select  that  master, 
and  his  service  was  given  in  exchange  for  something  in 
the  nature  of  wages.  He  was  free  to  choose  whom  he 
would  serve,  free  to  starve  if  he  pleased  and  serve  no  one, 
free  to  save  and  live  at  leisure  on  his  savings,  free 
to  come  and  go  at  the  bidding  of  no  one.  The  word 
Freedom  will  here  be  confined  to  this  kind  of  individual 
independence.  No  man  indeed  can  be  absolutely  and 
unlimitedly  free  in  this  sense  unless  he  lives,  like  Robinson 

166 


Liberty   and    Freedom 

Crusoe,  alone  upon  an  unpeopled  island.  Where  people 
live  within  the  range  of  one  another  the  freedom  of  each 
must  be  limited  by  the  freedom  of  others,  so  that  the 
formula  of  individual  freedom  is  this:  that  each  indi- 
vidual is  free  to  do  and  live  as  he  pleases  in  so  far  as  he 
does  not  interfere  with  the  corresponding  freedom  of 
other  individuals. 

So  speaking  we  regard  the  individual  as  an  independent 
unit;  the  moment,  however,  he  becomes  a  member  of  a 
crowd  new  limitations  to  his  freedom  occur.  For  every 
crowd  limits  and  must  limit  the  freedom  of  its  members 
and  not  merely  their  freedom  of  action,  but,  what  is  far 
more  serious,  their  freedom  of  thought.  The  crowd  being 
a  creature  of  emotions,  and  existing  by  the  possession  of 
a  common  emotion  in  its  units,  it  is  impossible  for  those 
units  to  escape  this  subordination  of  the  soul.  Thus  all 
the  citizens  of  a  country  are  supposed  to  share  alike  the 
emotion  of  patriotism.  A  citizen  who  in  time  of  war 
should  assert  that  he  was  not  patriotic  would  find  himself 
in  very  unpleasant  circumstances,  if  many  of  his  fellow- 
citizens  heard  that  utterance.  A  member  of  a  church  is 
supposed  to  hold  the  church's  faith,  and  to  suffer  penalties 
if  he  does  not.  A  liberal  is  held  to  accept  the  ideals  of  the 
Liberal  party;  a  member  of  the  Labour  party  is  under 
the  like  or  even  a  more  severe  compulsion;  and  so  it  is, 
more  or  less,  with  all  the  crowds  to  which  men  and  women 
belong.  Witness  the  dominion  of  fashion  over  so-called 
Society  people;  or  the  esprit  de  corps  of  the  army;  or 
"good  form"  in  a  public  school.  Evidently  there  is  an 
opposition  between  the  individual  and  the  crowd  in  this 

matter  of  freedom,  and  he  who  would  retain  as  much 

167 


The   Crowd   in    Peace   and   War 

individual  freedom  as  possible  must  be  careful  to  limit 
within  the  smallest  compass  his  adherence  to  crowds. 

That  a  political  organiser  should  desire  to  suppress  the 
individual  as  a  separate  political  unit  is  natural  enough. 
My  excellent  friend  Fitzgalahad  Jones,  for  instance,  finds 
himself  at  a  given  moment  more  nearly  in  agreement  with, 
say,  the  Liberal  party  than  with  its  rivals.  He  is,  therefore, 
induced  to  join  that  party,  and  thenceforward  must  always 
vote  for  its  nominees,  not  merely  his  own  preferences. 
The  day  when  he  does  not  vote  for  those  nominees  he 
becomes  a  "traitor."  Jones  as  an  individual  with  a 
volition  of  his  own  is  a  nuisance  to  all  the  organisers  who 
do  not  know  what  he  will  do,  and  have  to  spend  money 
and  trouble  on  trying  to  win  his  suffrage.  If  Jones  can 
only  once  for  all  be  dragooned  into  a  party  he  need  no 
further  be  bothered  about.  How  easy  would  politics 
become  if  every  one  were  once  for  all  definitely  a  party 
member  (as  most  voters  are  in  the  North  of  Ireland)' 
Political  leaders  could  then  sell  the  vote  of  Jones  if  it 
pleased  them.  But  look  at  the  question  from  the  point 
of  view  of  Jones.  The  advantage  of  parting  with  his 
individual  freedom  of  choice  is  not  so  obvious.  Present- 
day  Democracy  rests  on  a  few  organised  parties.  What 
would  a  democracy  be  like  if  based  on  millions  of  inde- 
pendent Joneses  each  of  whom  decided  to  vote  this  way  or 
that  as  he  pleased?  The  dominion  of  the  crowd  would  be 
at  an  end  both  for  better  and  for  worse.  We  shall  not 
behold  any  such  revolution  in  the  world  as  we  know  it. 

Thus  we  must  conclude  that  the  crowd  by  its  very 
nature  tends,  and  always  must  tend,  to  diminish  (if  pos- 
sible to  the  vanishing  point)  the  freedom  of  its  members, 

168 


Liberty   and    Freedom 

and  not  in  one  or  two  respects  alone,  but  in  all.  The 
crowd's  desire  is  to  swallow  up  the  individuality  of  its 
members  and  to  reduce  them  one  and  all  to  the  condition 
of  crowd-units,  whose  whole  life  is  lived  according  to  the 
crowd-pattern  and  is  sacrificed  and  devoted  to  crowd-inter- 
ests. Look  at  the  Salvation  Army,  for  instance,  and 
observe  how  if  it  could  it  would  make  every  one  of  its 
members  "a  good  salvation  soldier."  The  type  is  per- 
fectly definite  and  the  aim  of  the  organisation  is  to  make 
each  individual  approximate  as  closely  as  possible  to  that 
type.  It  is  immaterial  for  our  present  purpose  to  note  that 
the  type  in  question  is  superior  to  that  of  the  ordinary  indi- 
vidual laid  hold  of,  and  that  therefore  the  effect  of  such  a 
change  upon  each  would  be  a  great  improvement  in  his 
individual  character.  That  is  the  claim  of  most  crowds; 
they  generally  say  and  think  that  conformity  to  their 
standards  is  in  the  interest  of  the  individual,  and  often 
the  claim  may  be  warranted.  All,  however,  that  we  are 
here  concerned  to  record  is  the  fact  of  the  limitations  on 
individual  freedom  imposed  by  crowds  on  their  members. 
Such  limitations  will  be  advantageous  in  the  case  of  per- 
sons of  low  character,  but  often  mischievous  in  the  case 
of  those  of  fine  nature  and  high  capacities. 

An  excellent  illustration  of  this  crowd-dominance  crops 
up  in  my  afternoon  paper  —  the  "  Westminster  Gazette," 
an  organ  permeated  with  the  spirit  of  modern  Crowddom. 
It  appears  that  in  certain  parts  of  the  country  artisans,  by 
drinking  too  much  alcohol,  are  reducing  their  capacity  of 
doing  their  proper  work,  which  happens  at  the  moment  to 
be  of  great  importance  to  the  country  at  war.     Many 

interferences  with  liberty  are  permitted  in  war  time  by 

169 


The   Crowd  in    Peace   and   War 

general  consent.  It  is  accordingly  proposed  to  put  diffi- 
culties in  the  way  of  these  drinkers  by  executive  orders. 
One  would  suppose  that  the  just  way  to  do  this  would  be 
to  make  a  list  of  the  drinkers  and  prohibit  their  indul- 
gence. But  this  is  not  the  way  the  crowd  works.  To  it 
every  one  of  its  constituent  members  is  like  another  and 
all  must  be  drilled  and  controlled  alike.  As  to  the  form 
this  control  should  take,  my  paper  says  that  "there  is  a 
"great  variety  of  alternatives,"  of  which  it  proceeds  to 
give  examples,  but  the  crowd- voice  comes  out  in  its  con- 
cluding sentence  "whatever  measure  is  adopted  must  fall 
"evenly  on  all  classes,  upon  club,  restaurant,  and  hotel  as 
"upon  the  public  house."  Could  anything  be  more  ab- 
surd? Lest  a  gunmaker  or  a  shipbuilder  in  Glasgow  should 
drink  too  much,  Mr.  Asquith  must  not  take  a  glass  of 
sherry  with  his  lunch  at  the  Athenaeum !  That  is  charac- 
teristic of  all  crowds  in  respect  of  individual  freedom,  and 
it  is  that  quality  which  in  the  long  run  produces  an  accu- 
mulation of  individual  hostilities  to  crowd-rule,  and  sooner 
or  later  ends  by  upsetting  it. 

We  live  in  days  when  crowd-dominion  over  the  individ- 
ual has  been  advancing  at  a  headlong  pace.  If  things 
were  to  go  much  further  in  the  same  direction  individual 
freedom  would  be  dangerously  restricted.  A  man,  for 
instance,  goes  to  Africa,  or  Borneo,  or  North  or  South 
America,  and  by  hard  work  succeeds  in  making  money 
enough  to  satisfy  his  needs  for  the  rest  of  his  days.  He 
returns  home  and  is  perforce  swept  into  the  national 
crowd,  which  proceeds  to  take  from  him  as  much  of  his 
money  as  it  pleases  and  to  spend  it  in  ways  of  which  he 
may  thoroughly  disapprove.     If  he  must  not  drink  in 

170 


Liberty  and   Freedom 

London  lest  a  Glasgow  engineer  should  get  drunk,  why 
should  not  his  eating  be  alike  limited?  Why  not  the  style 
and  cut  of  his  clothes?  Why  not  the  size  and  character 
of  his  house?  He  must  cause  his  children  to  be  taught  at 
least  the  minimum  of  muddled  information  which  the  gov- 
ernment calls  education.  He  must  insure  for  his  depend- 
ents the  attention  of  an  ill-educated  physician  and  the 
administration  of  drugs  known  to  be  useless.  If  the  crowd 
had  its  way  every  mother  and  every  infant  would  be 
under  the  orders  of  inspectors,  regardless  of  the  capacity 
of  the  parent.  We  should  all  be  ordered  about  in  every 
relation  of  life  from  infancy  to  manhood,  and  in  all  our 
relations  with  children  and  servants.  Freedom  would 
utterly  vanish,  and  this  not  because  the  crowd  can  arrange 
matters  better  than  the  individual.  It  cannot.  It  lacks 
the  individual's  brains.  The  ultimate  reason  for  all  this 
interference  is  the  crowd's  desire  to  swallow  up  and  control 
the  unit.  The  instinct  of  all  crowds  is  to  dominate,  to 
capture  and  overwhelm  the  individual,  to  make  him  its 
slave,  to  absorb  all  his  life  for  its  service. 

Hence  individual  freedom  and  the  crowd  are  normally, 
necessarily,  and  for  ever  hostile  to  one  another,  and  no 
true  freedom  is  possible  for  the  individual  unless  he  can 
be  protected  against  crowd-dominance.  The  crowd  will 
not  willingly  protect  him  against  itself.  Such  protection 
for  him  must  be  imposed  on  it,  and  this  can  only  be  done 
by  limiting  the  crowd's  right  of  free  self-organisation,  in 
other  words  it  must  be  effected  by  the  constitution  of 
the  crowd  —  by  the  national  constitution  in  the  case  of 
a  country.     In  the  United  States  a  written  constitution 

and  a  powerful  Supreme  Court  to  interpret  it  do,  to  some 

171 


The   Crowd   in    Peace   and   War 

considerable  extent,  effect  the  protection  of  the  individual. 
The  United  States  is  in  fact  a  limited  Crowddom.  In 
Great  Britain  there  is  no  longer  any  such  assured  secu- 
rity. So  long  as  a  number  of  non-elected  individuals 
possessed  a  co-ordinate  share  of  legislative  authority  the 
individual  was  protected,  if  somewhat  ineffectually  after 
the  House  of  Lords  had  been  allowed  to  become  a  feeble 
and  frightened  body.  But  when  the  so-called  veto  of 
the  House  of  Lords  was  abolished,  even  this  protection 
was  removed,  and  all  that  remained  between  the  individual 
and  the  despotic  crowd  was  the  body  of  existing  statute 
law  and  the  judges  with  power  to  enforce  it.  There  is 
nothing,  however,  to  hinder  the  abolition  of  this  security 
except  the  time  necessary  for  passing  other  legislation, 
replacing  by  administrative  orders  the  decision  of  courts 
of  law  in  all  cases  where  the  interests  of  individuals  clash 
with  the  interests  of  the  crowd.  Mr.  Winston  Churchill 
stated  the  crowd's  claim  in  naked  simplicity  when  he  said, 
"Whenever  private  privilege  comes  into  collision  with 
"the  public  interest  the  public  interest  must  have  right 
"of  way."  Thus  if  I  am  the  owner  of  a  rare  and  beauti- 
ful picture,  that  is  obviously  a  case  of  private  privilege; 
as  obviously  it  is  to  the  public  interest  that  they  should 
be  able  to  see  it.  I  am  therefore  to  be  compelled  to 
show  it  to  them!  I  would  sooner  burn  it  than  suffer 
such  compulsion.  What  is  mine  I  will  show  if,  when, 
and  to  whom  I  please.  An  individual's  private  rights  are 
always  liable  to  interfere  with  some  public  interest,  but 
all  the  pleasure  of  life  consists  in  the  possession  and  jeal- 
ous maintenance  of  such  rights.     If  a  man  does  not  wish 

to  fight  for  his  country  is  it  right  to  compel  him  to  do  so? 

172 


Liberty   and    Freedom 

Suppose  he  knows  himself  to  be  a  constitutional  coward. 
One  of  the  finest  musical  artists  in  the  world  told  me  that 
he  was  a  hopeless  coward  and  that  nothing  on  earth  could 
make  him  face  even  the  noise  of  the  firing  of  a  gun,  to  say 
nothing  of  his  dread  of  a  bullet.  Why  should  he  be  com- 
pelled to  fight  for  his  country?  He  did  not  make  himself 
or  select  his  own  nerves  and  character!  This  is  an  ex- 
treme case.  In  time  of  war  the  relation  of  the  citizen  to 
his  nation  is  changed,  as  we  shall  see,  but  in  times  of 
peace  the  limitation  of  public  despotism  over  the  indi- 
vidual is  necessary  in  the  ordinary  affairs  of  life.  The 
only  question  is  where  to  draw  the  line.  Witness  the 
silly  interference  with  individuals  in  the  supposed  public 
interest  brought  about  by  Building  Acts  in  towns.  In- 
numerable instances  of  their  folly  could  be  cited.  The 
same  is  true  of  Education  Acts,  Insurance  Acts,  and  all 
other  the  like  interferences  with  individual  freedom, 
except  when  that  freedom  limits  the  corresponding  free- 
dom of  other  individuals.  No  doubt  there  will  always 
be  room  for  difference  of  opinion  as  to  the  interpretation 
of  this  proviso;  but  the  crowd  in  its  desire  for  dominion  is 
not  concerned  about  any  such  question.  It  desires  to 
control  the  whole  life  of  each  of  its  units  and  cannot  help 
so  desiring.  That  is  the  nature  of  the  beast,  and  it  is 
precisely  because  that  is  its  nature  that  it  needs  to  have 
its  powers  limited.  The  despotism  of  kings  has  been 
tried  and  the  experience  of  mankind  showed  that  unless 
a  king's  powers  were  limited  the  individual  was  bound  to 
suffer.  Now  the  despotism  of  crowds  is  on  trial  and  a 
similar  experience  is  arising  in  relation  to  them. 

There  exist  in  fact  two  separate  and  alike  inalienable 

173 


The   Crowd   in    Peace   and   War 

rights,  that  is  to  say  inalienable  without  damage  to  both 
men  and  mankind;  these  are  the  rights  of  man  and  the 
rights  of  the  people.  They  are  separate  and  indeed 
opposed  rights.  The  rights  of  man  are  to  individual  free- 
dom, protection  from  violence,  his  own  property,  and 
constitutional  guarantees.  The  rights  of  the  people  are 
to  the  limited  sovereignty  of  public  opinion.  The  contest 
between  these  two  rights  was  the  central  feature  of  nine- 
teenth-century politics  and  the  tendency  has  been  towards 
victory  for  the  rights  of  the  people,  or  in  the  words  of 
M.  Emile  Faguet,  "la  diminution  progressive  et  la 
"suppression  pour  finir  de  toute  liberte,  de  toute  surete 
"  individuelle,  de  toute  propriete,  de  toute  garantie  consti- 
"tutionelle,  de  toute  resistance  a  l'oppression."  Notwith- 
standing this  modern  tendency  it  none  the  less  remains 
and  always  must  remain  true  that,  to  continue  the  quo- 
tation, "L'individu  a  droit  a  l'existence  et  par  suite  au 
"libre  developpement  de  sa  personnalite  sous  le  regime 
"de  la  Souverainete  Nationale  aussi  bien  que  sous  celui 
"du  Droit  divin.  Ce  doit  meme  etre  le  but  essentiel  de 
"la  nation  en  tant  que  Peuple  Souverain  d'assurer  cette 
"existence  et  ce  libre  developpement.  II  est  done  a  la 
"fois  necessaire  et  legitime  de  proteger  l'individu,  s'il  y 
"a  lieu,  contre  le  despotisme  du  Peuple  aussi  bien  que 
"contre  celui  des  rois  absolus." 

Mazzini  saw,  and  as  far  as  he  saw,  sympathised  with 
what  was  coming,  as  is  shown  by  the  following  passage 
from  his  Essay  on  Carlyle:  "That  which  rules  the  period 
"which  is  now  commencing,  in  all  its  manifestations;  that 
"which  makes  every  one  at  the  present  day  complain,  and 
"  seek  good  as  well  as  bad  remedies  —  that  which  every- 

174 


Liberty   and    Freedom 

where  tends  to  substitute,  in  politics,  democracy  for 
governments  founded  upon  privilege  —  in  social  econ- 
omy, association  for  unlimited  competition  —  in  reli- 
gion, the  spirit  of  universal  tradition  for  the  solitary 
inspiration  of  the  conscience  —  is  the  work  of  an  idea 
which  not  only  alters  the  aim  but  changes  the  starting 
point  of  human  activity;  it  is  the  collective  thought 
seeking  to  supplant  the  individual  thought  in  the  social 
organism;  the  spirit  of  Humanity  visibly  substituting 
itself  (for  it  has  been  always  silently  and  unperceived  at 
work)  for  the  spirit  of  men." 

It  all  sounds  very  plausible,  very  hopeful.  A  fallacy, 
however,  lies  hidden  in  the  phrase  "collective  thought." 
There  is  no  such  thing  as  collective  thought.  Thought 
resides  only  in  the  individual  brain.  Individual  thought 
inspired  by  collective  emotion,  that  is  the  only  prolific 
power.  That  alone  leads  mankind  upward  along  a  solid 
track.  Collective  emotion  uncontrolled  by  individual 
thought  is  merely  explosive.  Whatever  it  casts  upward 
presently  falls  back  to  the  ground  again  and  none  the 
better  for  its  excursion  into  the  inane. 

Having  thus  briefly  considered  the  condition  of  Free- 
dom and  the  relation  of  a  free  individual  to  the  crowd,  we 
have  now  to  ask  wherein  what  is  popularly  called  Liberty 
consists,  and  how  far  Liberty  and  Freedom  are  capable 
of  existing  simultaneously  in  the  same  society.  Now 
whatever  condition  the  word  Liberty  implies  it  must  be 
of  a  kind  consistent  with  the  revolutionary  watchwords 
—  "Liberty,  Equality,  and  Fraternity!"  Liberty,  there- 
fore, must  be  a  condition  consistent  with  a  simultaneous 
state  of  equality  amongst  men.     But  individual  freedom 

175 


The   Crowd  in    Peace   and   War 

and  equality  cannot  exist  together,  for,  if  all  individuals 
are  free,  the  abler  and  more  gifted  will  impose  their 
directive  authority  upon  the  less  able,  and  heredity  will 
stereotype  the  consequent  inequality  generation  after  gen- 
eration. Equality  can  only  be  attained  and  maintained 
by  the  collective  despotism  of  the  less  able  multitude  over 
the  more  able  few,  and  liberty  must  be  a  condition  con- 
sistent with  such  a  despotism.  Liberty,  therefore,  is 
not  the  same  as  individual  freedom,  but  the  antithesis  to 
it.  Liberty  is  not  freedom  to  the  individual  from  the 
dominion  of  other  individuals  or  from  the  dominion  of 
crowds.  Liberty  is  freedom  for  crowds  to  dominate 
individuals,  freedom  for  crowds  from  impediments  to 
their  expansion,  organisation,  and  self-realisation.  It  is 
not  the  individual  but  the  crowd  that  calls  for  Liberty; 
it  is  not  in  the  interest  of  individual  development  but  in 
that  of  crowd-authority  that  the  goddess  of  Liberty  is 
invoked. 

Liberty,  then,  is  a  political  condition,  a  function  of  con- 
stitutions and  national  organisation.  As  Hobbes  stated: 
"The  liberty,  whereof  there  is  so  frequent  and  honorable 
"mention  in  the  histories  and  philosophy  of  the  ancient 
"Greeks  and  Romans  and  the  writings  and  discourses  of 
"those  that  from  them  have  received  all  their  learning 
"in  the  politics,  is  not  the  liberty  of  particular  men,  but 
"the  liberty  of  the  commonwealth."  This  is  not  alone 
true  of  nations,  it  is  true  also  of  lesser  crowds.  Thus 
Bismarck  said  of  the  Church  of  Rome  that  its  clergy  in 
any  country  "constitute  a  political  institution  under 
"clerical  forms,  and  transmit  to  their  collaborators  their 
"own  conviction  that  for  them  liberty  lies  in  dominion, 

176 


Liberty   and   Freedom 

"and  that  the  Church,  whenever  she  does  not  rule,  is  jus- 
"tified  in  complaining  of  Diocletian-like  persecution." 
This  demand  of  the  church  for  liberty  is  the  demand  also 
of  all  political  parties  and  of  every  association,  which 
aims  at  accomplishing  an  organisation  of  the  national 
crowd,  or  any  part  of  it,  in  order  to  give  effect  to  some 
political  or  social  ideal.  Labour  demanded  liberty  to 
organise  its  crowd,  liberty  to  impose  the  will  of  the  majority 
on  the  minority,  liberty  to  extinguish  the  individual  free- 
dom of  its  members.  That  is  what  the  political  demand 
for  liberty  always  means:  liberty  for  some  crowd  to 
enslave  certain  free  individuals. 

Liberty  in  this  sense  implies  the  possession  of  three 
principal  rights:  the  right  of  assembly  and  unrestrained 
speech,  the  right  to  print  and  publish  without  restriction, 
and  the  right  of  crowd-formation  and  organisation.  The 
first  of  these  rights  is  generally  called  the  right  of  free 
speech,  but  that  is  a  misnomer.  No  crowd  tolerates 
freedom  of  speech.  Imagine  the  kind  of  hearing  a  Tory 
would  receive  from  a  confessedly  Liberal  audience  if  he 
were  openly  to  speak  his  mind.  Nor  is  the  crowd  less 
intolerant  of  free  speech  in  the  ordinary  circumstances 
of  life.  Who  would  be  wise  to  utter  unpatriotic  sentiments 
in  a  full  railway  compartment  during  the  present  time  of 
war?  Where  the  crowd  is  ruling,  a  man  may  not  openly 
say  the  thing  he  pleases  if  it  be  in  opposition  to  public 
opinion.  It  is  proof  of  crowd-rule  if  a  man  of  ordinary 
prudence  finds  it  inadvisable  openly  to  oppose  public 
prejudice.  Nations  close  the  mouths  of  individuals  in 
the  name  of  patriotism.  Society  closes  them  in  the  name 
of  good   form.     Churches   close  them   in   the   name  of 

177 


The   Crowd  in    Peace   and  War 

orthodoxy.  No!  what  the  public  means  by  freedom  of 
speech  is  certainly  not  freedom  for  each  individual  to 
express  his  own  personal  opinion.  So-called  freedom  of 
speech  is  no  part  of  personal  freedom;  it  is  only  a  factor 
in  crowd-liberty. 

Freedom  of  speech,  freedom  of  public  meeting,  a  free 
press:  all  these  things  are  parts  of  liberty.  They  imply 
the  liberty  of  the  crowd  from  the  control  of  independent 
individuals  or  from  limitation  of  power  by  constitutional 
restrictions.  It  is  by  public  meetings,  public  speaking, 
and  the  press  that  crowds  are  formed,  developed,  and 
organised.  Where  these  are  prevented  or  regulated  crowd- 
formation  is  difficult.  Where  these  are  controlled  and 
directed  by  a  central  authority,  a  definite  direction  may 
be  imposed  on  public  opinion,  which  under  free  institu- 
tions might  have  adopted  a  contrary  attitude.  The 
German  Government,  by  controlling  and  directing  almost 
all  organs  of  publicity,  succeeded  in  creating  a  national 
opinion  of  singular  force  and  unanimity  in  sympathy 
with  the  wishes  and  aims  of  the  government  itself. 

In  order  to  form  and  build  up  an  opposition  to  the 

powers  that  be,  liberty  of  propaganda  is  almost  essential. 

It  can  only  be  dispensed  with  when  a  vast  number  of 

individuals  are  so  eager  to  work  against  a  government  as 

to  be  able  to  create  a  national  movement  by  multitudinous 

personal  activity.     Such  a  movement  was  thus  created  in 

Italy  against  the  Austrian  government  before  the  day 

of    Italian    unity.     Under    normal    political    conditions 

freedom  of  public  utterance  is  essential  for  the  formation 

of  a  new  public  opinion,  that  is  to  say  of  a  new  political 

crowd. 

178 


Liberty   and   Freedom 

The  impulse  being  thus  given,  liberty  to  organise  the 
new  body  is  a  further  necessity.  Existing  parties  view 
with  disfavour  the  formation  of  new  parties.  No  one 
can  be  sure  to  what  a  new  party  may  not  grow.  The 
right  to  organise  has  therefore  been  a  right  that  has  had 
to  be  fought  for.  Witness  the  great  and  bitter  struggles 
by  which  liberty  of  religious  organisation  was  won.  How 
the  Roman  Church  resisted  the  formation  of  Protestant 
bodies,  and  how  those  in  different  countries  endeavoured 
to  stifle  non-conforming  bodies!  Such  resistances  to  the 
formation  of  new  crowds  result  from  the  normal  crowd- 
instinct  of  self-preservation,  for  only  by  a  new  crowd 
can  an  existing  crowd  be  rivalled,  supplanted,  or  destroyed. 
Hence  the  demand  on  the  part  of  all  who  would  form 
crowds  for  liberty  to  do  so  if  they  can. 

This  liberty  of  theirs  does  not  suffice  them  unless  it 
includes  a  power  to  control  and  dragoon  the  individual 
member.  We  have  all  beheld  the  organised  body  of 
Labour  fight  for  and  obtain  this  liberty,  this  right  to  en- 
slave the  individual  workman  by  miscalled  peaceful 
persuasion!  It  is  the  open  and  avowed  object  of  the 
trades-unions  to  compel  all  workmen  to  come  within  their 
body  and  to  exercise  over  every  individual  member  a 
complete  despotism,  not  in  order  to  further  his  particular 
interest  but  only  that  of  the  collective  body.  The  facts 
in  this  case  are  so  obvious  that  it  would  be  waste  of  space 
to  illustrate  them  by  many  examples;    one  will  suffice. 

It  is  obviously  the  interest  of  the  better  and  more 
intelligent  workman  to  be  paid  more  highly  in  proportion 
to  his  superior  skill  and  ability.  The  employer  is  pre- 
vented from  thus  differentiating.     It  is  to  the  interest  of 

179 


The   Crowd   in    Peace  and   War 

a  quick  worker  to  be  able  to  earn  more  in  a  clay  than  a 
slow  one.  Trades-unions  set  their  faces  against  his  doing 
so.  If  one  man  can  manage  several  machines,  it  is  to 
his  interest  to  do  so,  and  be  paid  accordingly.  He  is 
forbidden  to  manage  more  than  one,  so  that  employment 
may  be  provided  for  a  larger  number.  In  these  and 
countless  other  ways  an  organised  and  despotic  crowd 
sets  the  interests  or  fancied  interests  of  the  many  before 
those  of  the  individual,  and  it  is  always  the  superior 
individual  whom  the  crowd  sacrifices,  and  always  the 
inferior  whom  it  fosters.  For  to  all  crowds  all  its  units 
are  alike.  If  some  are  not  to  drink,  all  must  not  drink. 
If  some  want  holidays,  all  must  take  holidays.  If  some 
are  to  be  slow  workers,  all  must  be  slow  workers.  All 
must  be  depressed  to  the  level  which  all  can  reach,  inevi- 
tably a  low  level. 

Liberty  so  to  organise  crowds  is  what  the  crowd  calls 
Liberty.  It  is  the  very  reverse  of  Freedom.  The  men 
who  call  aloud  for  this  liberty  and  are  never  tired  of 
praising  it  are  the  crowd-representatives.  They  are  the 
people  on  whom  restraint  falls,  where  liberty  of  associa- 
tion is  limited,  and  they,  instinct  with  all  the  passions, 
prejudices,  ambitions,  and  limitations  of  the  crowd  they 
incorporate,  resent,  as  all  crowds  and  crowd-men  must, 
any  interference  with  their  action  as  corporate  exponents. 

Obviously,  then,  if  individual  freedom  is  to  be  preserved 
crowd-liberty  must  be  limited.  Just  as  in  national  govern- 
ments unlimited  Crowddom  is  as  wretched  a  state  as 
unlimited  monarchy,  so  in  the  smaller  crowds  that  exist 
within  a  nation  a  similar  limitation  of  power  is  essential 
if  freedom   is   to  be  maintained.     Here  therefore  once 

180 


Liberty   and   Freedom 

more  we  are  driven  to  the  conclusion  that  for  a  healthy 
community  neither  complete  individual  freedom  nor  com- 
plete crowd-liberty  should  be  allowed.  It  is  as  useless 
as  it  is  foolish  at  this  time  of  the  world's  history  to  rage 
against  the  organisation  of  crowds  and  attempt  to  prevent 
their  easy  formation.  It  is  their  power  of  organisation 
and  control  over  the  units  that  compose  them  which  needs 
to  be  limited,  that  thereby  individual  initiative,  individual 
thought,  individual  self-realisation  be  not  impeded.  In 
a  sound  society  the  preservation  of  individual  freedom  is 
as  important  as  the  preservation  of  public  liberty,  and 
these  being  hostile  the  one  to  the  other,  it  is  a  main  func- 
tion of  the  central  authority  to  preserve  an  equilibrium 
between  them  in  every  rank,  occupation,  and  class. 


181 


CHAPTER  XII 
EDUCATION 

REFERENCE  has  been  made  above  to  the  educa- 
tional value  of  their  own  public  opinion  upon  the 
scholars  in  a  school,  but  the  matter  is  too  impor- 
tant to  be  thus  lightly  passed  over,  whilst  the  relation 
of  the  crowd  to  education  has  many  other  aspects  and 
produces  various  important  results.  It  might  be  sup- 
posed that,  if  the  individual's  interests  in  any  area  of 
life  are  to  be  provided  for,  apart  from  consideration  of 
the  interests  of  the  crowd,  it  should  be  in  respect  of  edu- 
cation; for  here  surely  is  not  the  sphere  for  block  treat- 
ment. The  gifts  of  each  child  are  different  from  those 
of  the  rest.  Each  has  his  own  possibilities,  his  own 
difficulties,  and  for  each  some  special  future  is  more  to 
be  chosen  and  prepared  for  than  any  other.  Moreover, 
a  given  child  cannot  be  equally  well  taught  by  any  of  the 
class  labelled  "teachers."  Some  can  learn  from  one, 
some  from  another;  and  the  best  ultimate  output  is  ar- 
rived at  by  the  combination  of  mutually  adapted  pupil 
and  teacher.  Of  course,  where  education  is  a  matter  of 
government  ordering,  and  a  universal  routine  is  applied 
to  all  alike,  the  ideal  of  individual  treatment  for  the  pur- 
pose of  attaining  the  best  individual  development  is  not 
even  aimed  at.  Under  no  circumstances  could  that  ideal 
be  fully  realised,  but  a  system  that  does  not  and  cannot 

182 


Education 

even  contemplate  it  as  to  be  aimed  at,  must  be  false  in 
the  very  nature  of  things. 

Our  modern  public  educational  system  does,  however, 
make  one  exception  in  the  uniformity  of  its  treatment. 
That  exception  is  not,  as  an  observer  from  another  planet 
might  have  supposed  it  could  be,  to  devote  special  atten- 
tion to  the  more  gifted  children  so  as  to  make  the  most  of 
unusual  abilities.  It  is  on  the  contrary  an  exceptional 
treatment  for  the  half-witted,  upon  whom  is  lavished  a 
care  and  attention  which  they  of  all  children  least  deserve 
and  can  least  profit  by.  Here  we  trace  the  dominance  of 
the  sentimentality  of  the  crowd,  not  of  the  wisdom  of  the 
wise.  For  the  crowd,  which  would  regard  all  units  as 
alike,  resents  the  intellectual  inequalities  which  nature 
decrees  at  birth,  fearing  in  each  superior  individual  a 
restive  crowd-unit,  but  it  has  no  corresponding  dread  of 
the  half-witted  and  can  satisfy  its  sentimentality  by 
according  them  exceptional  advantages  without  danger 
to  itself. 

The  crowd,  looking  to  its  own  continued  existence 
throughout  a  far  longer  period  than  the  span  of  human 
life,  regards  education  as  the  process  whereby  the  new  gen- 
eration is  to  be  made  in  its  own  likeness  and  to  continue 
its  own  immediate  aspirations.  The  Church  desires  to 
fashion  the  young  into  future  Churchmen,  the  Noncon- 
formists into  future  Nonconformists,  Socialists  into 
Socialists,  squires  into  squires,  liberals  into  liberals,  tories 
into  tories,  and  the  whole  nation  acclaims  the  wisdom  of 
bending  all  efforts  to  fashion  each  and  all  into  what  are 
called  "good  citizens."  Hence  the  struggle  on  the  part 
of  various  crowds  to  retain  the  right  of  polarising  the 

183 


The   Crowd   in    Peace   and   War 

education  of  those  children  on  whom  they  can  respectively 
lay  hands.  The  parson  wants  to  have  them  taught  the 
catechism  and  so  forth,  the  Roman  churchman  to  see 
that  they  are  well  grounded  in  Catholic  dogma,  the  Non- 
conformist that  they  are  not  taught  these  things  but 
another  set,  the  Socialists  would  have  their  young  lips 
early  framed  to  sing,  "There  is  no  god."  All  alike  are 
earnest  in  their  effort,  because  they  believe  with  pathetic 
unanimity  that  if  you  train  up  a  child  in  the  way  you 
wish  him  to  go  he  will  remain  in  that  way  after  your  com- 
pulsion is  removed,  and  this  though  experience  shows 
the  exact  contrary  to  be  often  the  case.  Thus  the  intro- 
duction of  undenominational  school-board  education  was 
presently  followed  by  a  remarkable  revival  in  the  vitality 
of  the  Church  of  England,  as  the  generation  thus  edu- 
cated grew  up. 

So  long  as  this  superstition  exists,  so  long  will  various 
crowds  clamour  for  liberty  to  preside  over  the  education 
of  their  children  —  a  liberty,  like  that  other  we  have 
just  been  considering,  not  for  the  person  educated  or  his 
parents  to  choose  what  he  shall  be  taught,  but  for  the 
educator  to  impose  on  him  a  determined  and  perhaps 
hated  teaching.  In  these  matters  it  is  not  by  the  teacher 
but  by  the  public  opinion  of  the  taught  that  an  individual 
child  is  influenced,  and  no  amount  of  mere  instruction  will 
in  any  way  alter  or  negative  the  power  of  that  opinion. 
It  is  only  a  gifted  teacher  who  can  rise  above  the  ordi- 
nary level  of  instruction  and  compulsion,  and  can  create 
a  desired  new7  public  opinion  among  his  charges,  that  can 
really  affect  their  character  and  stamp  a  lasting  impress 
upon  it. 

184 


Education 

A  remarkable  instance  of  what  can  thus  be  accomplished 
is  given  in  the  Blue  Book  entitled  "Annual  Report  for  1913 
"of  the  chief  medical  officer  of  the  Board  of  Education," 
(p.  237),  wherein  is  related  how  the  children  of  the  Hughes 
Fields  Girls'  Council  School  at  Greenwich  were  taught 
the  rudiments  of  cleanliness  and  decent  living.  "This 
"school  is  situated  in  an  extremely  poor  part  of  Deptford. 
"Indeed,  the  condition  of  the  children  attending  the 
"school  was  at  one  time  so  trying  to  those  who  came  in 
"contact  with  them,  that  the  staff  were  constantly  absent 
"through  illness,  it  became  impossible  to  keep  supply 
"teachers  more  than  a  few  days,  and  the  attendance  was 
"frequently  as  low  as  60-70  per  cent  for  the  whole  year." 
Accordingly,  nine  years  ago  a  new  regime  was  introduced, 
consisting  of  lessons  in  hygiene,  inspections,  and  doing 
things.  The  lessons  may  be  imagined.  They  were  only 
given  to  the  older  children.  The  inspections  were  daily; 
boots,  clothes,  hair,  hands,  nails,  handkerchiefs,  the 
basins  and  towels  with  which  they  had  washed,  all  were 
looked  at,  and  the  dirty  and  untidy  were  shamed  by  being 
put  right  in  the  presence  of  the  class.  This  was  the  real 
educational  force.  A  new  public  opinion  was  created, 
and  it  was  fostered  by  such  exercises  as  tooth-brush  drill, 
nail-trimming  drill,  and  so  forth.  The  children  were 
also  asked  at  what  hour  they  went  to  bed  the  previous 
night,  and  whether  they  had  slept  with  an  open  window. 
The  master  of  another  large  school  invokes  the  aid  of 
public  opinion  in  the  same  direction  by  having  a  pre- 
pared blackboard  in  each  class  room  with  spaces  for  the 
insertion  of  figures  detailing  the  number  present  with 
clean    boots,    collars,    nails,    teeth,    handkerchiefs,    and 

185 


The   Crowd   in    Peace   and   War 

"open  windows  last  night."  The  result  of  this  effort 
after  nine  years  on  the  Deptford  school  is  thus  described. 

"The  attendance  now  averages  over  92  per  cent,  the 
"members  of  the  staff  are  no  longer  frequently  absent 
"on  sick  leave,  or  desirous  of  obtaining  new  posts;  the 
"children  now  bear  the  closest  inspection,  and  are  able 
"to  progress  normally  in  the  ordinary  subjects.  Taking 
"the  school  as  a  whole,  the  effect  of  these  methods  can  be 
"best  seen  by  passing  from  the  lowest  class  to  the 
"highest,  thus  starting  with  dirty  teeth,  bitten  nails,  un- 
"  kempt  hair,  and  untidy  clothes,  we  reach  clean  teeth, 
"properly  tended  hands  and  hair,  and  neatly  mended 
u  clothes.  The  happy  air  and  healthy  looks  of  the  chil- 
"dren  make  it  hard  to  believe  that  this  is  actually  a  school 
"of  'peculiar  difficulty.'  The  children  obviously  love 
"the  school,  and  from  being  a  place  avoided  by  teachers 
"it  has  become  a  field  of  happy  and  useful  work."  Such 
are  the  results  brought  about  by  a  healthy  public  opinion. 
"In  many  schools  the  children  who  systematically  attend 
"school  with  clean  boots,  clean  collars,  hair  tidily  done, 
"teeth  brushed,  and  who  sleep  with  their  windows  open, 
"are  named  'specials,'  and  there  is  a  great  rivalry  amongst 
"them  to  be  so  classed." 

Hardly  could  one  cite  a  better  illustration  of  Ruskin's 

contention    that    "Education    does    not    mean    teaching 

"people  to  know  what  they  do  not  know  —  it  means 

"teaching  them  to  behave  as  they  do  not  behave."     If 

that  were  all  that  education  means  it  would  be  entirely  a 

matter  for  crowd-influence  and  not  for  instruction  in  the 

ordinary   meaning   of   the   word.     A   child,    who   passes 

through  such  a  school  as  this,  is  likely  to  receive  a  per- 

186 


Education 

manent  impression  from  it,  to  have  its  image  in  some 
degree  stamped  on  his  own  individual  character,  to  have 
his  opinions  in  some  degree  fixed  by  it  for  life.  As 
Dr.  Johnson  said,  "Opinions  once  received  are  seldom 
"recalled  to  examination;  having  been  once  supposed  to 
"be  right  they  are  never  discovered  to  be  erroneous." 
This  is  as  true  of  false  opinions  as  of  sound  ones. 

The  case  above  cited  is  an  example  of  the  proper  use 
of  crowd-emotion  for  the  improvement  of  the  individual. 
Seeing  that  crowds  are  the  home  of  emotions,  it  follows 
that  from  them,  by  infection  and  influence,  by  the  ab- 
sorption of  their  atmosphere,  the  emotions  of  the  individual 
are  mainly  to  be  aroused  or  even  created.  If  you  could 
bring  an  individual  into  contact  with  successive  crowds, 
all  animated  by  noble  ideals  of  different  kinds,  the  chances 
are  that  he  would  catch  those  ideals  one  after  another 
and  himself  become  impregnated  by  them,  just  as  from 
an  evilly  minded  public  he  would  with  difficulty  avoid 
catching  low  and  base  ideals.  The  use  of  crowdship  in 
education,  therefore,  is  obvious;  it  is  to  ennoble  the  unit. 
Instruction  cannot  do  this;  instruction  tends  to  defeat 
its  own  object  if  it  deserts  its  proper  domain  of  transfer- 
ring facts  and  developing  skill.  The  whole  power  of  edu- 
cation in  respect  of  character  lies  in  the  school's  public 
opinion,  and  he  who  can  influence  the  growth  in  that 
of  high  ideals  and  just  principles,  he  is  the  moral  educator 
of  the  young,  and  no  other  can  take  his  place.  It  is,  as 
I  have  said  above,  because  our  English  Public  Schools 
and  Universities  have  developed  this  kind  of  moral  force, 
that  they  have  been  so  efficient  in  the  formation  of  our 
national  character.     They  may  not  be  the  best  agencies 

187 


The   Crowd    in    Peace   and   War 

in  the  world  for  teaching  facts;  German  schools  claim  to 
turn  out  better  equipped  intelligences  per  hour  of  teach- 
ing; Kut  as  agencies  for  the  formation  of  character  the 
English  Public  School  and  the  old  universities  may  claim 
pre-eminence  in  the  world. 

The  national  crowd,  then,  if  wisely  directed,  will 
demand  of  a  national  system  of  education,  whose  main 
business  is  to  produce  good  citizens,  that  chief  attention 
be  given,  not  to  what  is  taught,  but  to  what  is  caught,  not 
to  the  amount  learnt  by  a  child  but  to  the  tone  acquired. 
All  of  us  learn  the  facts  and  acquire  the  skill  we  need 
for  life  mainly  from  life  itself.  Teachers  can  impose  on 
us  but  a  slender  equipment.  Most  of  us  learn  by  study 
not  by  teaching,  or  only  by  teaching  as  a  result  of  study. 
He  that  desires  to  learn  can  be  easily  taught  if  you  give 
him  the  opportunity.  But  to  establish  that  desire  in  an 
individual  —  that  is  the  difficulty,  for  it  cannot  be  estab- 
lished by  inculcation  but  only  by  infection.  In  countries 
where  the  mass  of  the  people  have  an  emotional  belief, 
a  crowd-faith  in  education,  there  alone  does  this  desire 
commonly  arise  in  the  young.  In  Scotland,  in  Germany, 
—  I  know  not  where  else,  —  there  exists  an  emotional  faith 
in  education,  and  the  young  work  hard  and  willingly.  In 
England  such  faith  does  not  exist,  and  young  workers 
accordingly  find  the  life  of  a  "smug"  far  from  easy.  He 
that  can  teach  the  nation  a  new  faith  in  work  will  accom- 
plish for  England  the  great  revolution  of  which  it  stands 
in  need;  but  if  our  schools  were  caused  to  lose  their 
present  high  moral  tone  in  exchange  for  a  more  efficient 
system  of  instruction,  and  if  our  public  school  boys  were 
to  forsake  the  ideals  of  good  form  they  now  so  keenly 

188 


Education 

maintain  and  take  up  instead  a  cold  ambition  for  intel- 
lectual success,  the  change  would  be  disastrous  and  Eng- 
land would  presently  lose  her  high  place  amongst  the 
nations.  "I  will  do  it,"  promises  the  South  American. 
"On  the  word  of  an  Englishman?"  inquires  his  friend. 
"Yes!  on  the  word  of  an  Englishman."  That  is  the  finest 
tribute  to  our  country  that  the  world  affords.  The  public 
opinion  of  our  public  schools  is  the  medium  in  which  that 
honest  English  spirit  is  most  efficiently  cultivated. 

Curiously  enough,  their  very  efficiency  as  character-form- 
ing bodies  is  the  reason  why  our  ancient  and  incomparable 
Universities  of  Oxford  and  Cambridge  are  of  relatively 
liltle  use  to  foreign  students,  not  even  to  our  kindred 
American  students.  In  the  past  they  have  gone  chiefly 
to  German  universities,  the  reason  being  that  they  were 
seeking  to  acquire  knowledge  and  skill,  which  could  there 
be  acquired,  in  some  branches  of  learning  at  any  rate, 
more  readily  than  here.  After  all,  the  main  business  of 
Oxford  and  Cambridge  has  been  to  turn  out  straight-deal- 
ing, clean-living  Englishmen,  and  only  in  a  secondary 
degree  to  manufacture  scholars.  They  have  served  our 
national  purpose  superlatively  well.  It  is  not  impossible 
that  they  might  equally  well  turn  out  citizens  of  the  world. 
That,  however,  is  a  matter  for  the  world  to  discover,  not 
for  us  to  aim  at.  Moreover  the  spirit  of  our  Universities 
was  not  produced  by  taking  thought;  it  was  evolved  in 
long  process  of  time.  If  ever  a  world-university  is  to  arise, 
impregnated  with  a  high  international  or  super-national 
human  tone,  that  also  will  have  to  grow,  and  who  shall 
say  where  it  is  likely  to  take  root? 

If,  as  Macaulay  said,  the  first  business  of  a  state  is  the 

189 


The   Crowd   in   Peace   and   War 

education  of  its  citizens,  the  very  word  employed  indi- 
cates that  the  matter  to  be  attended  to  is  the  development 
in  them  of  the  character  of  citizenship.  By  one  of  those 
strange  contrarieties  of  which  modern  systems  of  govern- 
ment and  legislation  afford  so  many  examples,  it  is  ex- 
actly this  side  of  the  educational  problem  to  which  the 
legislature  in  its  large  lack  of  wisdom  appears  to  give 
no  thought.  What  subjects  pupils  shall  be  taught,  what 
hours  they  shall  attend,  till  what  age  they  shall  be  kept 
at  school,  such  are  the  matters  in  relation  to  the  young 
that  an  Education  Office  is  called  to  determine.  These 
are  all  questions  that  should  be  determined  by  individual 
teachers,  by  parents,  or  perhaps  small  local  divisions, 
and  they  should  of  necessity  vary  widely  from  time 
to  time  and  from  place  to  place.  The  one  universal 
need,  the  same  everywhere,  is  the  formation  of  character, 
and  that  is  supposed  to  be  attained  by  what  is  called 
Religious  Education. 

From  the  point  of  view  of  the  nation  the  promotion  of 
a  high  moral  tone  among  the  scholars  in  every  primary 
school  is  the  first  object  to  be  aimed  at.  If  Religious 
Education  is  the  chosen  means  to  this  end  it  must  be 
something  altogether  different  from  mere  instruction,  and 
it  must  not  be  left  to  chance,  or  divided  among  a  lot  of 
conflicting  sects,  or  confined  to  a  definite  set  of  hours,  or 
least  of  all  abandoned  altogether.  The  Labour  Party 
are  in  favour  of  having  no  religious  education  at  all,  such 
is  their  misunderstanding  of  their  own  socialistic  princi- 
ples. If  Socialism  is  to  be  a  reality,  it  must  be  based  on 
the  moral  education  of  every  member  of  the  community, 
for  until  all  our  hearts  are  changed,  the  socialistic  ideal 

190 


Education 

is  impossible  of  attainment.  The  socialist  Sunday  schools 
accomplish  nothing  by  making  their  children  sing  "There 
"is  no  god,"  beyond  the  probability  that  in  after  life  those 
very  individuals,  reacting  against  a  teaching  imposed  on 
them,  will  be  more  liable  than  others  to  become  highly 
superstitious  and  credulous.  Not  socialists  only  or  mainly, 
but  all  persons,  who  have  the  future  welfare  of  their 
country  at  heart,  are  called  upon  to  devise  some  universal 
method  for  stimulating  throughout  all  the  primary  schools 
the  same  kind  of  fine  ideal  of  conduct  which  has  made 
our  public  schools  and  old  universities  so  great  a  blessing 
to  Great  Britain. 

As  for  the  teaching  of  facts  and  the  development  of 
skill  in  the  individual  pupil,  that  must  always  be  and 
remain  an  individual's  business.  No  general  laws  can 
govern  it,  no  central  administrative  body  can  help  it,  no 
code  can  define  it.  It  must  be  as  variable  as  are  the 
individual  teachers  and  the  individuals  taught."  Each 
pupil  is  a  separate  problem.  Each  teacher  must  solve 
each  such  problem  for  himself  in  his  own  way.  There  is 
no  other  possibility;  all  that  the  interference  of  a  central 
authority  can  accomplish,  if  it  insists  on  meddling  in 
these  matters,  is  to  impede  where  it  fussily  proposes  to 
direct  and  help. 

One  powerful  impetus  and  one  only  can  the  national 
crowd  give  to  education,  in  the  sense  of  learning  facts  and 
acquiring  skill:  it  is  to  supply  the  infective  passion  for 
learning.  But  it  can  only  supply  a  passion  which  itself 
experiences.  For  no  crowd  can  generate  a  new  emotion 
from  the  depths  of  its  own  multiplicity;  a  new  emotion 
must  be  kindled  within  it,  as  of  old,  by  a  prophet.     What 

191 


The   Crowd  in    Peace   and   War 

England  needs  is  a  prophet  of  learning,  and  surely  now 
is  the  time  for  him  to  appear:  now  when  the  great  object 
lesson  of  German  efficiency  looms  so  large  within  the 
vision  of  us  all.  The  same  great  light  which  manifests 
the  inestimable  value  to  us  of  fine  national  character, 
fashioned  within  our  people  by  the  successive  ideals 
laboured  for  and  proclaimed  by  the  generations  that 
have  gone  before,  manifests  also  a  lack  among  us  of  per- 
sonal efficiency  in  those  things  which  have  to  be  learned 
by  study;  so  that,  while  we  may  indeed  thank  our  fore- 
fathers that  they  have  not  imposed  upon  us  the  over- 
burdening weight  of  a  vile  ideal  of  mere  brute  force,  we 
ought  likewise  to  perceive  that  ours  is  now  the  duty  to 
make  good  what  is  lacking,  and  to  determine  that  in  the 
future  we  will  labour  to  implant  in  our  nation  a  new  faith, 
a  new  aspiration  toward  a  larger  learning,  a  fuller  intel- 
lectual life,  and  a  wider  diffusion  of  every  sort  of  skill. 
"There  is  nothing  in  any  state  so  terrible,"  said  Sir  Walter 
Raleigh,  "as  a  powerful  and  authorised  ignorance."  Let 
us  see  to  it  that  at  long  last  ignorance  shall  be  nationally 
realised  to  be  among  the  greatest  of  national  perils. 


192 


CHAPTER  XIII 
MORALS 

ROBINSON  CRUSOE,  when  alone  on  his  island, 
was  relieved  from  all  the  problems  that  arise 
among  members  of  a  community.  He  could  harm 
no  fellow-man  by  any  action,  but  he  could  still  harm 
himself  and  behave  brutally  to  the  animal  world  about 
him.  I  once  saw  a  Dago  sailor  plucking  a  little  live  bird 
to  pieces,  limb  from  limb.  The  hideousness  of  that  act 
did  not  depend  on  the  social  relations  of  the  evil-doer. 
It  was  a  sin  against  his  own  humanity.  It  was  vile  be- 
cause he  was  a  man,  a  being  highly  enough  developed 
to  be  able  to  enter  into  relations  with  the  exterior  world 
of  nature  and  animals  on  a  higher  plane  than  that  of  mere 
destructive  brutality.  A  hawk  tears  a  dicky-bird  to 
pieces  without  becoming  thereby  an  immoral  hawk,  or 
descending  in  the  hawkly  scale,  but  the  man  who  so  acts 
descends  in  the  human  scale  and  thus  injures  himself  and 
is  immoral. 

There  is  therefore  a  morality  which  applies  solely  to 
the  individual  as  a  separate  unit,  as  it  were  in  a  crowd- 
vacuum.  I  will  not  pause  to  inquire  whether  that  mo- 
rality could  have  been  developed  in  such  a  vacuum, 
because  for  our  present  purpose  it  is  sufficient  to  indicate 
the  existence  of  individual  morality  in  a  man's  relations 
to  himself  and  to  nature.     Clearly  Robinson  Crusoe  could 

193 


The   Crowd   in    Peace    and   War 

have  overeaten  himself,  or  he  could  have  brewed  intoxi- 
cants and  become  a  drunkard,  or  he  could  have  indulged 
in  other  private  vices,  and  all  of  them  might  have  been 
called  immoral  because  all  were  acts  by  which  he  injured 
himself.  Similarly  by  idleness  he  might  have  lowered  his 
vitality,  by  sloth  he  might  have  dulled  his  powers  of  ob- 
servation and  action.  In  these  and  many  other  ways  he 
might  have  sinned  against  himself.  Any  action  harm- 
ful to  the  health  either  of  his  body  or  his  mind  would  have 
been  rightly  describable  as  an  immoral  action,  and  if  he 
realised  it  to  be  so  there  would  have  risen  within  him  an 
impulse  not  to  do  that  action.  This  impulse,  this  prick 
of  conscience,  would  have  resulted  from  the  mere  instinct 
of  self-preservation  which  every  healthy-minded  individ- 
ual possesses,  and  which  operates  apart  from  any  relation 
to  his  social  surroundings.  It  is  an  instinct  completely 
individualistic  alike  in  origin  and  in  its  purpose. 

I  shall  apply  the  term  Individual  Morality  to  a  man's 
obedience  to  such  laws  as  his  instinct  for  self-preservation 
and  impulse  toward  self-development  unite  to  impose 
upon  him.  Individual  morality  heeds  the  adjustment  of 
the  individual  to  the  external  world  of  nature.  Its  laws 
are  primarily  those  of  hygiene,  physical  and  spiritual. 
Science  determines  them,  so  far  as  the  individual  has 
knowledge;   will  enforces  them. 

Individual  morality,  enforced  by  the  will  and  stimulated 
by  individual  conscience,  does  not  carry  us  very  far. 
More  important  are  a  man's  relations  to  the  persons 
with  whom  he  comes  in  contact,  his  conduct  toward  each 
of  them  and  theirs  toward  him.  We  may  apply  the  term 
Mutual  Morality  to  the  principles  ensuing  from  the  con- 

194 


Morals 

duct  of  such  mutual  relations  between  individuals  as 
those  of  husband  and  wife,  those  of  parents  and  children, 
brothers  and  sisters,  those  of  friends,  and  of  men  in  busi- 
ness relations  to  one  another  —  master  and  servant, 
buyer  and  seller,  landlord  and  tenant,  and  so  forth.  All 
these  are  individual  relations  over  which  the  crowd  only 
by  usurpation  obtains  any  control,  unless  individuals 
voluntarily  call  for  its  sanctions  or  interference.  Thus 
individuals  may  invoke  the  crowd  to  take  cognisance  of 
an  agreement,  and  the  crowd  may  permit  its  representa- 
tives to  do  so  and  may  define  the  terms  on  which  they 
may  do  so.  Two  men  may  make  a  verbal  bargain  and 
trust  one  another's  honour,  or  they  may  make  a  legal 
bargain  which  crowd-representatives  will  enforce.  That 
is  the  individual's  option.  The  admission  of  the  crowd 
as  party  to  a  bargain  between  individuals  is,  however,  a 
great  danger,  because  the  crowd  is  certain  sooner  or  later 
to  impose  on  them  consideration  for  its  own  supposed 
interests,  under  which  before  long  theirs  may  be  over- 
whelmed. Marriage  is  an  obvious  case  in  point  which 
we  shall  presently  consider. 

I  have  used  above  the  word  honour,  for  brevity,  as 
indicating  the  kind  of  power  by  which  individuals  may 
be  governed  in  their  mutual  relations;  but  that  already 
assumes  the  existence  of  crowd- morals  enforced  by  public 
opinion.  Honour  is  what  the  crowd  of  his  own  kind  ren- 
ders to  a  man  who,  in  his  relations  with  other  individuals, 
acts  up  to  their  standard.  This  is  not  mutual  morality 
but  a  kind  of  crowd-morality,  though  applied  to  individ- 
uals, and  it  is  a  dangerous  force.  Honour  even  to-day 
in  some  countries  drives  men  to  kill  one  another  in  private 

195 


The   Crowd   in    Peace   and   War 

combat,  and  it  might  be  shown  to  be  far  from  a  perfect 
guide  of  conduct  under  all  circumstances.  No!  the  guide 
to  a  perfect  mutual  morality  is  the  whole  group  of  Chris- 
tian virtues,  and  greatest  amongst  them  is  Charity. 
Love  is  the  fulfilling  of  all  the  law  of  mutual  conduct,  and 
he  that  sins  against  his  fellow-man  sins  always  against  love. 
Love  is  the  sufficient  stimulus  that  forms  and  quickens 
the  mutual  conscience.  It  operates  only  between  indi- 
viduals. It  has  no  relation  to  the  crowd.  The  crowd, 
indeed,  conscious  of  the  power  of  love,  attempts  to  con- 
fuse the  individual  mind  and  to  impose  on  it  the  duty  of 
collective  loving;  but  this  is  mere  crowd-speech,  the 
flower  of  rhetoric,  nothing  more.  If  anyone  doubts  it  let 
him  attend  some  big  public  meeting  and  gaze  at  the 
audience  from  the  platform.  Then  let  him,  retaining  if 
he  can  a  perfectly  detached  attitude  towards  the  en- 
thusiasms of  the  multitude,  ask  himself  does  he,  can  he, 
actually  and  truly  love  that  seething  assemblage,  love  it 
with  an  emotion  wholly  the  same  as  the  emotion  he  feels 
towards  a  human  friend?  Of  course  he  cannot.  He  may 
generate  towards  it  within  himself  a  share  of  the  crowd's 
enthusiasm.  That  is  not  love.  Only  by  confusing  his 
own  mind  with  crowd-passions  and  mistaking  his  share 
of  them  for  individual  emotion  can  he  deceive  himself 
into  the  belief  that  he  loves  mankind.  He  may  be  pos- 
sessed by  an  enthusiasm  of  humanity,  but  he  can  only 
love  individual  men,  not  mankind. 

The  human  crowd,  however,  exists  and  must  always 
exist.  Each  one  of  us  must  belong  to  many  crowds  and 
our  lives  and  feelings  must  be  to  a  greater  or  less  extent 

conditioned  by  them.     Hence  individuals  in  a  gregarious 

196 


Morals 

world  are  necessarily  involved  in  a  third  and  more  compli- 
cated morality,  which  we  may  designate  as  social.  Social 
Morality  is  independent  alike  of  individual  and  of  mutual 
morality,  which  remain  the  same  whether  the  individual 
be  living  as  a  Crusoe,  as  one  of  a  family,  or  as  the  unit  of 
a  crowd.  His  own  well-being  of  body  and  mind  and 
that  of  those  personally  associated  with  him  are  as  much 
matter  for  pursuit  by  him  under  the  one  condition  as  under 
the  other,  so  long  as  what  is  good  for  him  does  not  prove 
to  be  bad  for  the  crowd.  When  that  happens  a  conflict 
is  set  up  and  interesting  problems  arise  for  solution. 

Social  morality  bears  to  crowds  the  same  relation  that 
individual  morality  bears  to  individuals,  but  with  this 
practical  difference,  that,  whereas  the  unit  imposes 
his  own  individual  morals  upon  himself,  the  crowd  im- 
poses social  morals  upon  the  unit,  and  in  so  doing  regards 
not  his  well-being  but  its  own.  The  crowd  being,  as  by 
hypothesis  we  are  regarding  it,  a  kind  of  beast,  not  hu- 
man, but  built  up  of  human  units,  as  living  tissue  is  built 
up  of  cells,  and  the  crowd  having  a  life  of  its  own,  in  some 
ways  superior,  in  others  inferior,  to  the  life  of  its  com- 
ponent individuals,  possesses  a  corresponding  number  of 
interests  of  its  own,  altogether  different  from  and  inde- 
pendent of  the  interests  of  those  individuals.  These  are 
the  interests  involved  in  the  preservation,  growth,  higher 
development,  and  healthy  persistence  of  the  said  social 
organism  or  particular  crowd  for  the  time  being  under 
consideration,  whether  it  be  national,  municipal,  religious, 
or  of  any  other  sort. 

The  national  crowd  or  great  public  is  the  important 
morality-making  power,  to  which  all  minor  crowds  are, 

197 


The  Crowd  in   Peace  and  War 

in  this  matter,  of  insignificant  importance.  The  well- 
being  of  the  nation  as  a  whole  is  the  sole  interest  of  the 
national  crowd.  To  it  all  individuals  are  alike.  All 
are  mere  units,  one  as  good  as  another.  The  individual's 
powers,  interests,  preferences,  capacities,  accomplishments, 
do  not  come  within  its  ken,  unless  they  are  employed 
representatively  in  its  service.  It  cares  no  more  for  the 
life  of  one  of  them  than  for  that  of  another,  except  in  the 
case  of  a  crowd-representative.  Leaving  crowd-repre- 
sentatives out  of  account,  all  other  men  are  to  it  of  equal 
value  and  all  alike  are  to  be  subordinated  to  its  interests 
and  if  need  be,  sacrificed  to  those  interests. 

The  crowd  accordingly,  by  every  means  in  its  power, 
strives  to  impose  this  subserviency  upon  the  individual. 
It  stigmatises  as  crimes  those  actions  which  are  obviously 
injurious  to  the  social  organism  and  which  can  be  defined 
and  are  capable  of  proof.  Against  these  formal  laws  are 
enacted  and  enforced  by  representative  executive  au- 
thority. It  stigmatises  as  vices  actions  injurious  to  the 
individual  or  those  which  injure  itself  in  a  vague  man- 
ner and  cannot  be  precisely  defined,  proved,  and  pre- 
vented by  force.  These  it  attempts  to  suppress  by  the 
power  of  public  reprobation  and  by  the  exercise  of  every 
kind  of  restraint  that  education,  tradition,  social  struc- 
ture, and  any  other  discoverable  agency  employable  in 
its  service  can  bring  to  bear.  Further,  the  crowd  that 
imposes  morals  is  not  the  mere  body  of  living  folk  at  any 
given  moment  in  the  country  or  to  be  numbered  in  the 
nation.  It  includes  the  generations  that  have  passed. 
Morals  are  not  the  invention  of  the  people  of  to-day; 
they  have  been  slowly  produced  and  continuously  devel- 

198 


Morals 

oped  and  handed  down  in  the  long  process  of  time.  A 
given  generation  may  add  to  them  or  give  them  a  slightly 
new  direction,  but  that  is  all.  They  are  the  product  of 
the  cumulative  public  opinion  of  many  generations,  and 
the  purpose  of  them  now  and  always  is  and  has  been  to 
promote  the  collective  health  and  general  well-being  of 
the  national  crowd. 

It  is  evident  that  it  matters  nothing  to  the  individual 
whether  he  flourishes  in  health  and  happiness  in  conse- 
quence of  his  individual  morality  or  in  consequence  of 
his  accordance  with  a  healthy  crowd-morality.  Nor 
would  it  really  matter  to  a  nation  whether  all  its  units 
were  to  flourish  for  the  one  reason  or  for  the  other.  If 
every  individual,  going  his  own  way  and  following  his  own 
rule  of  conduct,  were  to  obtain  happiness,  a  country 
would  be  filled  with  happy  individuals  without  any  help 
from  a  crowd-morality.  But  this  the  crowd  can  never 
be  expected  to  conceive.  No  public  opinion  ever  really 
approves  of  individual  success.  A  man  for  instance  may 
keep  a  private  school  and  turn  out  from  it  a  succession 
of  fine  young  fellows  impregnated  with  noble  ideals  and 
perfectly  fitted  for  the  struggle  of  life.  Such  a  private 
venture  will  never  be  regarded  sympathetically  by  the 
crowd,  which  is  driven  by  its  own  nature  to  desire  control 
over  all  the  formative  agencies  that  go  to  fashion  a  coming 
generation.  It  insists  directly  or  indirectly  on  having  its 
morality  imposed  everywhere  and  on  every  one,  and 
it  desires  to  take  security  that  so  it  shall  be. 

It  is  not,  however,  the  formal  and  legal  imposition  of 
crowd-morality  that  is  most  important,  but  the  informal 
and    indirect.     This    imposition    is    effected    by    public 

199 


The   Crowd  in    Peace   and   War 

opinion  enforcing  upon  the  minds  of  all  what  it  calls  the 
laws  of  right  and  wrong.  Those  things  are  held  up  to 
us  as  right  which  are  beneficial  to  the  crowd;  those  things 
as  wrong  which  are  injurious  to  it.  Thus  recently  we 
came  for  a  time  very  near  to  a  condition  in  which  a  man 
would  have  found  himself  regarded  as  doing  a  wrong 
action  if  he  drank  a  glass  of  wine.  The  body  politic,  we 
were  told,  was  suffering  from  alcohol,  which  some  of  its 
units  were  drinking  too  freely.  Those  who  did  so  un- 
doubtedly sinned  against  individual  morality,  but,  if  that 
were  all,  the  crowd  would  have  been  profoundly  indifferent. 
It  is  only  when  the  crowd  as  such  suffers  by  the  action  of 
individuals  that  it  begins  to  talk  of  right  and  wrong.  As 
soon  as  it  obtains  an  emotional  realisation  that  a  given  act 
is  injurious  to  the  collective  body  it  directs  public  opinion, 
and  presently  also  by  its  aid  the  law,  against  that  act,  and 
knowing  as  it  does  no  difference  of  persons,  but  regarding 
all  as  units,  it  discountenances  the  act  in  all  and  tries 
to  put  an  end  to  it  universally. 

Under  such  circumstances  an  opposition  may  readily 
arise  between  individual  and  crowd  morality.  Alcohol 
may  be  advantageous  to  a  given  individual;  it  may  be 
helpful  to  his  digestion  or  even  to  his  mind.  No  matter! 
If  it  hurts  the  crowd  by  the  misuse  of  some,  he  must  give 
up  drinking  it;  or  at  least  every  effort  the  crowd  can  make 
shall  be  employed  to  drive  him  to  give  it  up.  This  con- 
crete instance  is  merely  one  of  a  countless  number  that 
might  be  cited  where  the  interest  of  the  crowd  and  the 
interest  of  the  individual  may  be  at  variance  and  where 
the  crowd  endeavours,  often  with  success,  to  make  its 
conception  of  its  own  interest  prevail. 

200 


Morals 

The  most  prominent  and  important  sphere  within  which 
the  crowd's  interest  has  been  made  to  prevail  over  that  of 
individuals  is  in  the  relation  of  the  sexes,  or  rather  of 
individuals  of  opposite  sex.  The  loose  first  phrase  I  was 
there  betrayed  into  using  is  one  of  crowd-manufacture, 
confusing  the  true  issue.  The  relation  between  the  sexes 
should  mean  nothing  else  than  the  relation  of  the  mass 
of  men,  regarded  as  one  crowd,  with  the  mass  of  women, 
regarded  as  another  crowd.  That  relation  is  obviously 
a  crowd  affair,  but  has  small  practical  importance. 
Very  different,  however,  is  the  personal  relation  between 
two  individuals  of  opposite  sex.  That  is  the  most  indi- 
vidual affair  in  the  whole  range  of  human  relations,  and 
is  one  with  which  an  observer  from  another  planet  might 
suppose  that  the  crowd  would  have  nothing  to  do.  It  is, 
however,  in  this  matter  that  the  crowd  is  for  ever  attempt- 
ing to  be  most  despotic,  and  were  it  not  that  the  individ- 
ual is  much  cleverer  and  more  inventive  than  any  crowd 
can  be,  and  is  usually  able  to  outwit  a  crowd  if  he  or  she 
sets  his  or  her  mind  so  to  do,  crowd-despotism  over  sex- 
ual relations  would  have  been  completely  established  long 
ago. 

A  paper  lies  before  me,  one  of  a  thousand  such  and 
not  more  authoritative,  where  some  journalist  has  set 
down  in  plain  language  the  crowd  point  of  view  on  this 
question;   wherein  it  is  contended: 

"That  marriage  consists  in  the  union  of  the  sexes  for 
"such  a  term,  and  under  such  conditions,  as  will  result 
"in  the  production  of  the  maximum  number  of  offspring 
"capable  of  surviving,  in  each  particular  species,  climate, 
"and  grade  of  civilisation. 

201 


The   Crowd  in   Peace   and   War 

"That  marriage  is  therefore  to  be  regarded  neither 
"from  the  point  of  view  of  the  male,  nor  from  that  of  the 
"female,  but  solely  from  that  of  the  race." 

There  you  have  the  whole  contention  in  a  nutshell, 
and  nothing  could  be  less  in  harmony  with  the  interests 
of  many  individuals.  Marriage  from  the  point  of  view  of 
an  individual  is  not  primarily  a  union  for  the  production 
of  children  at  all,  but  for  the  mutual  company  and  happi- 
ness of  two  people  who  find  joy  in  the  presence  of  one 
another.  The  desire  of  two  mutually  loving  persons  for 
the  possession  of  one  another  is  their  purpose  in  marriage, 
and  the  last  thing  most  lovers  are  thinking  of  is  the  bene- 
fit of  the  race.  When,  however,  a  child  is  born,  a  third 
individual  has  to  be  considered  with  its  interests,  its  own 
individual  interests,  not  those  of  the  crowd  in  it,  and  the 
attitude  of  the  parents  has  to  take  account  of  the  needs  of 
the  child,  and  that  whether  there  be  a  society  around  to 
interfere  in  its  behalf  or  not.  All  this  belongs  to  the 
sphere  of  mutual  morality. 

From  the  point  of  view  of  the  individual,  and  where 
there  are  no  children,  the  whole  purpose  of  marriage 
ceases  when  love  ceases,  and  the  desire  for  mutual  com- 
panionship is  at  an  end.  But  from  the  point  of  view  of 
the  social  crowd  the  marriage  relation  bears  so  important 
a  part  in  social  structure  that  all  marriages  are  put  on  an 
equality,  after  the  crowd's  happy-go-lucky  way  of  deal- 
ing with  units,  and  once  entered  into  with  its  consent 
and  under  its  auspices  can  only  with  the  greatest  difficulty 
be  dissolved.  Indeed,  the  crowd  would  not  allow  the 
dissolution  of  marriages  under  any  circumstances  if  ex- 
perience had  not  made  it  feel  that  worse  evils  can  arise  to 

202 


Morals 

it  from  undissolved  wrecked  unions  than  if  the  worst  of 
them  are  allowed  to  be  dissolved.  In  allowing  such 
dissolutions,  however,  the  crowd  is  not  to  be  regarded  as 
in  the  smallest  degree  considering  the  interests  and  happi- 
ness of  the  individuals  concerned,  but  only  its  own  in- 
terests. One  proof  of  this  will  suffice.  If  the  interest  of 
individuals  were  contemplated,  a  very  important  con- 
sideration would  be  whether  there  were  any  children  of 
the  marriage  in  question,  and  childless  marriages  would 
be  treated  differently  from  fertile  marriages.  Both,  how- 
ever, are  treated  by  the  law  of  divorce  exactly  alike. 

Divorce,  however,  is  only  an  extreme  case,  where  the 
relations  between  individual  men  and  women  come  out 
into  the  open  and  are  handled  by  courts  of  law.  The 
crowd  acts  far  more  intimately  in  these  matters  upon  in- 
dividuals and  imposes  or  attempts  to  impose  its  will  upon 
them  in  a  much  more  subtle  and  usually  effectual  manner, 
by  aid  namely  of  public  opinion  and  of  conscience.  Take 
again  a  concrete  instance  and  observe  how  the  individual 
is  controlled.  There  exists  in  most  women  the  instinct 
of  motherhood,  one  of  the  most  powerful  instincts  in 
humanity.  Unless  the  individual  woman  can  satisfy  this 
instinct  under  the  aegis  of  matrimony,  a  weight  of  hostile 
public  opinion  is  brought  against  her  which  few  are  strong 
enough  to  resist.  So  furious  and  insane  is  this  opprobrium 
that  it  usually  also  blasts  more  or  less  completely  the 
young  life  that  springs  from  an  unrecognised  union. 
More  wonderful  than  all  is  it  that  in  this  matter  the 
effective  force  employed  is  the  public  opinion  of  the  great 
body  of  women,  which  seldom  declares  itself  as  a  separate 
power  except  in  this  relation.     The  reason  is  obvious 

203 


The   Crowd  in    Peace   and   War 

enough.  Women  throughout  the  ages  have  depended  in 
the  main  on  the  support  of  men.  Each  woman  has 
needed  to  have  a  man  for  her  supporter,  and  the  sexual 
attraction  which  Nature  has  given  her,  backed  by  social 
sanctions,  has  been  the  means  whereby  she  has  obtained 
support  throughout  the  whole  of  her  life  and  not  merely 
in  her  youth.  It  follows  that  a  woman  who  gives  herself 
to  a  man  and  becomes  a  mother  without  securing  from 
him  the  life-support  so  essential  for  the  general  body  of 
women,  seems  to  do  an  injury  to  that  general  body,  even 
if  she  does  a  benefit  to  herself.  The  public  opinion  of 
women,  based  upon  the  experience  of  all  past  generations, 
is  turned  against  the  offender,  and  it  would  take  a  very 
strong  character  indeed  to  face  that  opprobrium  and  to 
be  satisfied  with  motherhood,  where  motherhood  and  not 
wifehood  was  her  desire. 

If  throughout  long  ages  women  had  been  self-support- 
ing and  had  been  able  to  make  their  livelihood  indepen- 
dently of  men,  it  is  safe  to  assert  that  this  attitude  of  the 
whole  sex  toward  the  unmarried  mother  would  never  have 
arisen;  and  it  may  be  concluded  that,  now  that  women 
are  making  themselves  more  and  more  self-supporting, 
a  change  is  likely  to  come  slowly  about  in  the  feminine 
attitude  toward  not  the  "weaker"  but  really  the  stronger 
and  more  independent  sister.  Even  in  the  past,  women 
of  genius,  great  actresses,  singers,  artists,  and  the  like,  have 
often  set  public  opinion  at  defiance  and  have  refused,  and 
successfully  refused,  to  permit  their  right  to  motherhood 
and  wifehood  to  be  defined  and  circumscribed  by  public 
opinion;  and  public  opinion,  finding  itself  powerless 
against  the  independent  action  of  strong  individuals,  has 

204 


Morals 

regretfully  beheld  them  go  their  own  way,  and  has  con- 
tinued to  accept  them  as  esteemed  and  even  glorious  per- 
sonages. It  is  really  because  such  women  are  obviously 
self-supporting  that  they  have  been  able  to  conquer  and 
preserve  their  liberty.  Probably,  therefore,  as  the  num- 
ber of  self-supporting  women  increases,  their  freedom  to 
determine  the  character  of  their  own  relations  to  men  will 
correspondingly  develop. 

So-called  sexual  morality,  and  several  other  moralities, 
based  merely  on  what  is  the  interest  of  a  crowd,  stand  on 
but  a  poor  foundation.  When  nothing  but  public  opinion 
opposes  individual  passion,  especially  if,  as  may  happen, 
that  passion  is  not  in  itself  ignoble,  public  opinion  is  likely 
enough  to  be  flouted.  The  firm  and  solid  foundation  for 
a  good  and  beautiful  relation  between  individuals,  whether 
of  opposite  or  of  the  same  sexes,  is  what  we  have  called 
mutual  morality.  The  relations  between  two  individuals 
have  nothing  to  do  with  the  public,  nothing  to  learn  from 
the  opinion  of  any  crowd  large  or  small.  They  are  only 
governed  by  the  same  duties,  the  same  self-sacrifices,  the 
same  mutual  consideration  on  which  Christianity  is 
founded,  and  these  are  determined  not  by  law,  not  by 
public  sentiment,  but  by  the  love  and  kindness  which  each 
owes  to  each.  Here,  however,  we  touch  a  branch  of  our 
subject  which  can  be  better  treated  in  a  chapter  to  itself 
later  on. 

Returning  to  the  illustration  above  cited  from  con- 
temporary experience  of  the  attitude  of  public  opinion 
under  the  stress  of  war  to  what  is  called  the  drink-ques- 
tion, it  may  be  made  to  serve  a  further  purpose  in  intro- 
ducing us  to  an  obscure  and  little  considered  agency, 

205 


The   Crowd  in   Peace   and   War 

whereby  the  crowd  attempts  to  dominate  the  individual 
in  its  own  interests.  We  passed  through  a  stage  of 
propaganda  which  began  to  be  successful.  The  public 
interest  in  the  question  was  aroused.  The  King,  as  na- 
tional representative,  ordered  the  consumption  of  alco- 
holic drinks  to  be  discontinued  in  his  palaces.  Other 
influential  persons  followed  his  example.  It  almost 
became  "bad  form"  to  be  seen  drinking  a  glass  of  wine. 
Just  as  society  in  the  nineteenth  century  made  public 
intoxication  shameful  and  thus  largely  put  an  end  to  it, 
so  perhaps  society  may  attempt  to  put  an  end  to  the 
public  consumption  of  intoxicants  even  in  moderation. 
Assume  that  to  happen  and  to  be  maintained.  Parents 
will  then  be  telling  their  children  that  it  is  wrong  to  drink 
wine  or  spirits.  Virtuous  persons  will  assume  the  new 
custom  of  abstinence  to  be  axiomatic.  Before  long  this 
general  attitude  will  begin  to  implant  in  sensitive  indi- 
viduals an  emotion  of  shame  at  the  mere  thought  of 
transgression.  Abstinence  will  become  a  matter  of  con- 
science and  every  "good  citizen"  will  come  to  possess  a 
conscience  equipped  with  this  further  inhibitory  reflex 
emotion  toward  the  mere  suggestion  of  drink. 

It  is  not  difficult  to  add  to  the  activities  of  a  lively 
conscience.  I  knew,  for  example,  an  old  lady  who  had 
been  brought  up  to  think  card-playing  wrong,  and  that 
playing-cards  were  implements  of  the  devil.  Her  con- 
science would  not  permit  her  to  handle  them.  She  would 
have  been  unhappy  for  days  if  she  had  permitted  herself 
to  offend  it  in  this  particular.  Yet  she  loved  the  harm- 
less game  of  Patience,  which  she  willingly  played  with 
slips  of  cardboard  numbered  from  one  to  thirteen.     Those 

206 


Morals 

were  not  the  devil's  playing-cards,  and  her  conscience 
permitted  her  to  use  them  without  offence.  Here  con- 
science may  be  said  to  have  been  superfluously  active. 
On  the  other  hand  it  is  easy  to  cite  instances  where  con- 
science is  as  remarkably  dull.  Thus  to  avail  oneself  of  a 
man's  services  against  his  will  is  generally  described  as 
robbing  him  of  what  is  justly  his.  Yet  quite  honorable 
and  upright  citizens  of  the  United  States,  in  the  long  period 
preceding  the  present  days  of  international  copyright, 
were  not  pricked  by  their  consciences  when  they  pur- 
chased "pirated "  editions  of  the  works  of  English  authors, 
nor  do  I  think  it  would  be  affirmed  that  the  American 
publishers  of  such  editions  regarded  themselves  or  were 
regarded  as  dishonest  persons.  Their  consciences  gave 
them  no  trouble  on  this  score.  International  copyright 
was  at  last  brought  about,  not  because  piracy  was  con- 
sidered to  be  wrong,  nor  on  account  of  any  public  ideal 
of  honesty,  but  simply  because  American  authors  found 
it  difficult  to  make  a  living  in  competition  with  "pirated" 
publications. 

A  beheaded  frog,  though  dead,  will  still  for  some  hours 
move  one  of  its  legs  to  rub  away  a  drop  of  acid  applied  to 
certain  spots  on  its  body.  This  action  is  called  reflex. 
The  nerve  irritation  caused  by  the  acid  sends  a  message 
to  a  centre  in  the  spinal  cord,  where  it  stimulates  a  motor 
nerve  and  causes  the  reflex  movement  of  the  limb.1  No 
intervention  of  thought  is  required.  The  nervous  struc- 
ture of  the  creature's  body  is  such  that  the  stimulus 
directly  causes  the  reflex  action  without  the  intervention 

1  I  hope  this  statement  is  physiologically  correct,  but  am  writing 
only  from  memory  of  what  I  believe  myself  to  have  been  told. 

207 


The   Crowd  in    Peace   and   War 

of  the  brain.  In  human  beings  a  great  number  of  move- 
ments are  reflex.  Moreover  habit,  by  linking  together 
certain  nerve  centres,  tends  to  make  many  movements, 
originally  voluntary,  become  more  and  more  nearly  reflex 
by  frequent  repetition  in  response  to  a  recurrence  of  the 
same  stimulus.  The  business  of  conscience  is  to  produce 
in  the  moral  domain  a  correspondingly  automatic  response 
to  definite  stimuli  or,  as  we  call  them,  temptations.  It  is 
the  business  of  conscience  to  provide  the  individual 
tempted  with  an  automatic  reaction  against  temptation. 
If  it  were  possible  to  make  conscience  a  hereditary  in- 
stinct, all  men  would  in  time  become  by  birth  completely 
moral  beings,  and  would  behave  in  a  moral  fashion  as 
instinctively  as  a  bird  builds  its  nest.  Acquired  char- 
acteristics, however,  are  not  inherited.  The  conscience 
of  each  has  therefore  to  be  built  up,  and  this  is  accom- 
plished by  habit  and  instruction,  backed  and  enforced  by 
public  opinion,  whose  operation  on  the  young  is  particu- 
larly efficient. 

The  main  effort  of  parents  and  responsible  persons  is 
to  implant  conscience  within  children  before  their  minds 
have  had  time  to  take  independent  shape.  That  is  why 
conscience  is  often  most  vigorous  with  the  young.  They 
have  no  other  guide  of  life.  The  development  and  reform 
of  conscience  is  the  work  of  later  life  by  the  assertion  of 
individuality.  Diverge  from  the  prescribed  norm  and 
conscience  protests;  hold  to  the  divergence  and  conscience 
atrophies  as  far  as  the  particular  divergence  is  concerned. 
But  this  guiding  Social  Conscience :  What  is  it?  Clearly 
it  is  nothing  more  than  the  voice  of  the  crowd  speaking 
in  and  to  the  individual.     The  inward  voice  saying  that 

208 


Morals 

this  or  that  is  wrong  has  no  other  sanction  than  the 
general  opinion  of  the  society  in  which  the  individual  grew 
up.  Did  not  Huckleberry  Finn's  conscience  prick  him 
severely  for  a  low-down  immoral  lad  because  he  assisted  a 
nigger  to  hide  who  was  believed  to  be  a  runaway  slave? 

The  ancient  Egyptians  at  the  time  of  the  eighteenth 
dynasty  had  already  recognised  the  social  conscience, 
which  they  called  the  heart,  as  the  guide  to  a  comfortable 
crowd-harmonising  life,  likely  to  lead  to  prosperity. 
Here  is  what  a  doubtless  estimable  person  had  to  say  of 
himself  on  his  own  tombstone: 

"This  is  my  character  to  which  I  have  borne  witness, 
"and  there  is  no  exaggeration  therein.  ...  It  is  my 
"heart  that  caused  me  to  act  through  its  guidance  unto 
"me.  It  was  an  excellent  prompter  unto  me;  I  did  not 
"infringe  its  commands;  I  feared  to  transgress  its  guid- 
ance. Therefore  I  prospered  exceedingly,  and  was 
"fortunate  on  account  of  that  which  it  caused  me  to  do; 
"I  succeeded  by  reason  of  its  guidance.  Of  a  sooth,  true 
"is  that  which  is  said  by  men:  'It  (the  heart)  is  the  voice 
"'of  God  that  is  in  everybody;  happy  is  he  whom  it  has 
"'led  to  a  good  course  of  action!'" 

How  the  priests  of  Amen  instilled  this  rudimentary  idea 
of  conscience  into  their  people  is  not  recorded.  The 
mediaeval  Christian  Church  accomplished  that  end  by 
aid  of  confession.  Confession  enabled  the  voice  of  the 
Church  to  pronounce  judgment  on  the  sins  of  the  individual. 
The  voice  of  the  priest  was  the  voice  of  the  Christian  crowd. 
By  education,  tradition,  environment,  and  equipment 
the  priest  was  efficiently  shaped  into  conformity  with  the 
ideal  of  the  Church.     Thus,  whereas  Protestantism  at 

209 


The   Crowd  in    Peace   and   War 

a  later  date  and  by  reaction  enthroned  the  individual 
conscience,  Catholicism  has  always  enthroned  the  collec- 
tive conscience,  the  voice  of  the  crowd.  If  confession 
had  been  optional,  the  individual  might  have  called  in  the 
help  of  the  crowd  if  and  when  he  pleased,  but  confession 
being  compulsory  the  crowd  conscience  was  thereby  for- 
cibly imposed  on  the  individual.  Moreover  the  power  of 
this  imposition  was  enhanced  by  the  formalities  that  pre- 
ceeded  and  accompanied  it,  their  purpose  being  to  bring 
the  penitent  into  a  mild  form  of  hypnotic  trance.  In  that 
condition  the  subject  becomes  peculiarly  susceptible  to  the 
influence  of  suggestion.  He  will  accept  implicitly  what  is 
told  him  by  the  operator  and  the  impression  received 
may  survive  after  his  emergence  from  the  trance.  This  is 
why  the  sacerdotal  churches,  without  actually  resorting 
to  hypnotism,  do  all  they  can  to  heighten  the  power  of 
suggestion  and  the  authority  of  the  priestly  operator. 

Alas!  the  Social  Conscience  is  only  the  voice  of  God  in 
so  far  as  the  voice  of  the  people  is  the  voice  of  God.  Con- 
science can  be  nothing  more  than  a  measure  of  the  divine 
inspiration  in  the  crowd.  Yet  no  wise  man  will  underrate 
either  its  value  or  its  power.  Has  it  not  been  said  that 
"Conscience  doth  make  cowards  of  us  all"?  That  is  not 
because  it  is  the  voice  of  God,  but  because  it  is  the  voice 
of  the  multitude.  Many  individuals  fear  not  God,  but 
few  indeed  are  they  who  do  not  instinctively  fear  the 
Crowd,  and  are  strong  enough  in  their  individuality  to 
be  able  to  stand  against  it  —  to  say  openly  the  unpatri- 
otic thing,  to  confess  the  unorthodox  faith  in  an  orthodox 
world,  to  do  what  is  unpopular,  to  take  their  own  line  in 
spite   of   public  opinion.     It   is   conscience   that   makes 

210 


Morals 

them  cowards;  the  voice  of  the  crowd  within  is  even  more 
potent  than  the  voice  of  the  crowd  without.  Granted 
that  public  opinion  and  the  ideals  of  different  crowds 
are  the  most  powerful  agency  for  the  development  of 
individuals.  Granted  that  conscience  is  the  agency  by 
which  this  development  is  accomplished.  It  is  likewise 
true  that  the  same  agency  may  be  and  often  is  equally 
employed  to  impose  absurd  restrictions  on  the  freedom 
of  the  individual,  and  to  make  him  abstain  from  actions 
on  the  ground  that  they  are  wrong,  which  in  fact  are  per- 
fectly innocent,  though  believed  by  the  crowd  to  be  in- 
jurious to  its  interests. 

All  that  conscience  can  accomplish,  be  its  possessor 
never  so  docile  to  its  promptings,  is  to  make  that  indi- 
vidual live  the  comfortable  kind  of  life  that  results  from 
fitting  perfectly  into  his  place  in  his  various  crowds.  The 
model  schoolboy,  the  ideal  undergraduate,  the  orthodox 
churchman  or  chapel  member,  the  good  party  man,  the 
convinced  and  disciplined  trades-unionist,  the  public- 
spirited  citizen  —  such  lead  easy  lives;  their  ways  are 
made  plain  before  them;  their  problems  are  solved  with- 
out debate.  Their  consciences  are  at  peace,  and  this  will 
be  so  whether  the  society  of  their  day  be  in  fact  on  the 
up-grade  or  the  down-grade,  whether  public  opinion  be 
healthy  or  debased,  whether  the  national  ideal  be  high 
or  low.  The  individual  who  decides  to  go  his  own  way, 
basing  his  actions  upon  the  judgment  of  his  own  reason, 
will  have  many  a  difficulty  to  face  which  the  other  avoids. 
Such  an  individual  may  be  a  great  prophet,  an  original 
seer,  a  man  among  men;  he  may  perchance  be  a  great  crim- 
inal.    In  either  case  he  stands  outside  the  crowd,  above  it 

211 


The   Crowd   in    Peace   and   War 

or  below,  its  light  or  its  foe,  oftenest  perhaps  its  foe.  The 
crowd's  emotion  of  hostility  to  the  independent  indi- 
vidual is  not  after  all  without  some  justification. 

The  value  of  conscience,  as  of  public  opinion,  within 
proper  limits  is  not  to  be  denied.  It  is  the  irrational 
machine-like  obedience  to  them  which  marks  the  com- 
monplace individual.  A  fully  developed  intelligence  will 
make  both  subservient  to  an  enlightened  reason,  but  the 
duty  lies  on  him  to  see  that  his  reason  really  is  enlightened. 
Mere  mechanical  morality  is  a  deadly  thing.  It  is 
inconsistent  with,  even  antagonistic  to,  charm.  The 
person  whose  every  thought  and  act  can  be  predicted, 
whose  voice  is  the  voice  of  the  crowd,  whose  life  is  that 
of  the  normal  crowd-unit  —  such  an  one  will  of  necessity 
be  devoid  of  charm.  The  secret  of  charm  is  a  beautiful 
spontaneity  and  unexpectedness,  a  spontaneity  of  action, 
thought,  and  speech,  welling  forth  from  the  fullness  of  a 
rich  and  individual  nature,  an  attitude  governed  by  emo- 
tions of  kindness  and  love  to  individuals,  in  accordance 
with  nature,  but  regardless  of  public  prejudice  and  popu- 
lar judgment.  Such  a  person's  conscience  is  a  law  unto 
itself.  If  originally  formed,  as  all  young  consciences  are, 
by  the  impact  of  the  notions  of  the  society  into  which  he 
was  born,  it  has  been  developed,  enlightened,  and  cor- 
rected by  reflection  and  experience.  It  looks  not  to  the 
ideals  of  others  but  to  its  own  reason  and  to  nature  for 
its  sanctions;  it  grows  not  with  accretions  from  without 
but  by  evolution  from  within.  It  is  a  force  unlike  any 
other,  and  the  man  who  tends  and  follows  its  light  is  little 
likely  to  go  far  astray  in  the  journey  of  life  toward  its 
undefinable  but  not  therefore  unattainable  goal. 

212 


CHAPTER  XIV 
RELIGION 

IF  man  does  in  fact  possess  the  twofold  nature  here 
assumed,  and  is  governed  now  by  his  social  instincts 
and  now  by  his  own  individual  reason,  it  is  obviously 
important  to  inquire,  What  is  the  relation  of  this  twofold 
nature  to  religion?  Is  religion  a  part  of  his  individual  or 
his  crowd  equipment?  Is  his  God  the  God  of  men  or  of 
Mankind?  Is  the  relation  of  man  to  God  a  personal  or  a 
collective  relation?  or  does  it  partake  of  both  characters, 
and,  if  so,  in  what  degrees?  These  are  questions  so 
obvious  and  so  important  that  a  large  literature  might  be 
expected  to  exist  concerning  them,  and  yet  I  am  not  aware 
that  they  have  received  any  formal  consideration  what- 
ever, though  on  this,  as  on  so  many  other  matters  of  fact 
in  relation  to  so  vast  and  obscure  a  subject,  I  cannot 
assume  to  be  fully  informed.  As  the  reader  will  long 
before  this  have  perceived,  my  remarks  are  in  the  nature 
of  the  tentative  suggestions  of  an  individual,  and  every 
word  I  write  is  set  down  with  full  consciousness  of  its 
merely  personal  value.  All  is  tentative,  the  groping  of 
a  solitary  traveller  in  the  dark,  through  an  unmapped 
region.  It  is  with  the  utmost  humility  that  any  sugges- 
tion is  made  for  the  guidance  of  others,  and  that  especially 
in  the  case  of  the  vague,  difficult,  and  profoundly  im- 
portant area  which  we  now  approach. 

213 


The   Crowd  in    Peace   and  War 

Man  hovers  in  the  midst  of  the  infinite  unknown  like 
a  firefly  in  the  night,  capable  only  of  perceiving  the  tiny 
sphere  which  his  own  spark  of  light  illumines.  In  the 
process  of  time  that  light  has  steadily  increased  in  power, 
and  the  area  illuminated  by  it  has  correspondingly  ex- 
panded; but  the  infinite  unknown  still  surrounds  him,  and 
his  ideas  about  that  can  only  be  based  on,  or  tested  by, 
his  knowledge  of  the  finite  illumined  space  around  him. 
Religion  is  man's  description  of  his  ideas  about  the  great 
unknown,  his  projection,  on  the  darkness,  of  what  he  con- 
ceives that  darkness  to  contain.  It  follows  that  the  fur- 
ther back  in  time  we  go,  the  less  enlightened  will  be  man's 
religious  ideas.  Although  in  relation  to  the  truth  of 
things  the  difference  between  the  most  advanced  human 
knowledge  to-day  and  that  of  prehistoric  man  may  not 
actually  amount  to  much,  the  relative  difference  is  still 
immense. 

We  shall  not,  therefore,  gain  much  knowledge  of  the 
fundamentals  of  religion  by  following  back  its  history  and 
tracing  its  earliest  discoverable  forms,  for  the  funda- 
mentals of  religion  at  any  moment  are  not  the  errors  it 
has  inherited  from  the  past,  but  the  last  and  nearest 
approximations  to  truth  which  have  been  added  by  high- 
est contemporary  thought  and  imagination.  The  appeal- 
ing interest  of  religious  history  is  not  the  light  it  throws 
on  religion  but  the  light  it  throws  on  man.  The  history 
of  chemistry  is  not  a  study  that  furthers  chemical  dis- 
covery ;  the  man  who  would  further  that  must  master  the 
latest  ideas  and  need  not  trouble  himself  about  alchemy. 
The  history  of  religions  is  like  a  bowl  of  water  drawn  from 
the  flooded  upper  Indus,  clear  and  drinkable  on  the  sur- 

214 


Religion 


face,  but  growing  muddier  and  muddier  below,  and  end- 
ing in  a  thick  sediment  of  slime.  Early  religious  ideas 
are  not  profound,  but  muddy.  The  pool  is  not  deep 
because  it  is  hard  to  see  into;  it  is  merely  foul. 

Thus  in  Greek  religion  the  Olympian  gods  are  notable 
and  even  splendid  beings,  but  with  many  a  low  and  even 
vile  feature  inherited  by  them  from  their  filthy  predeces- 
sors. In  the  hands  of  the  great  Greeks  they  were  further 
purified  and  idealised,  till  they  came  to  embody  the  glory 
of  the  sun,  the  power  of  the  air,  the  immeasurable  wonder 
of  the  sea,  —  elements  of  nature  that  still  seem  to  us 
instinct  with  the  splendour  of  the  divine.  It  is  this 
splendour  of  theirs  we  love,  not  the  gloomy  and  horrible 
totems  whose  filth  they  have  sloughed  off.  In  those 
rudiments  the  divine  qualities  did  not  even  exist  in 
embryo.  They  were  not  evolved  out  of  any  germ  in  the 
mind  of  prehistoric  man;  they  were  added  on,  not  dis- 
entangled. A  glorious  god  is  like  some  priceless  ruby, 
just  another  form  of  alumina  which  differs  little  from 
clay  in  the  material  of  which  it  is  made;  but  in  the  pres- 
ence of  its  inestimable  beauty  who  cares  what  it  is  made 
of?  It  is  the  form  of  its  structure,  the  power  that  crys- 
tallized it,  that  matters.  We  want  the  gem,  not  the 
mud.  We  may  perhaps  find  it  with  some  uncrystallized 
matter  attached.  If  so  we  disentangle  it  from  that,  we 
even  cut  out  its  own  imperfections,  and  what  remains, 
perfect  and  complete,  is  the  thing  we  worship.  Thus 
also  is  it  with  the  gods. 

It  follows  that,  for  our  present  inquiry,  we  need  not  go 
back  to  origins.  We  have  no  concern  with  uncrystallized 
gods.     We  can  begin  with  them  when  they  themselves 

215 


The   Crowd   in    Peace   and   War 

begin  to  be  great  and  majestic  beings  whom  the  nations 
worshipped,  —  Bel  of  Babylon,  Assur  of  Assyria,  Jahve 
of  the  Israelites,  Amen-Ra  of  Thebes,  —  gods  who  were 
masters  of  nations  worth  considering,  gods  who  were 
worshipped  by  men  in  the  van  of  human  thought  when 
thinking  had  begun.  What  then  were  those  gods  —  those 
and  their  contemporaries?  Were  they  not  in  every  case 
the  embodied  ideal  of  a  crowd,  the  expression  of  a 
national  ideal,  the  focussed  image  of  a  nation's  desires? 
In  god  and  king  the  nation  was  incorporated,  and  god 
and  king  were  closely  allied.  When  Pharaoh  advances 
into  battle  Horus  flies  over  his  head;  above  Sargon 
flies  Assur;  both  together  are  the  expression  of  the  na- 
tion itself.  In  the  wars  of  the  nations  the  gods  contend, 
and  the  god  of  the  victorious  nation  rules  over  the  gods 
of  the  defeated.  These  national  gods  are  like  him  of 
Germany,  the  god  of  the  Hohenzollerns,  whom  Kaiser 
Wilhelm  invokes,  the  only  survivor  in  the  west  down  to 
these  late  days  of  the  old  pagan  divinities. 

By  conquest  nation  swallowed  up  nation,  and  one  na- 
tional god  consequently  rose  above  others,  thus  forming 
pantheons  under  the  hegemony  of  a  chief.  For  several 
centuries  the  process  went  forward,  till  in  the  vast  empire 
of  Rome  all  the  gods  and  worships  of  the  united  peoples 
were  contained  and  confused  together.  The  pax  romana 
put  the  old  fighting  gods  out  of  business;  the  absorption 
of  nations  into  an  empire  weakened  national  ideals. 
Local  divinities  became  almost  meaningless  and  belief 
in  them  faded.  Efforts  were  made  to  bring  order  into 
the  chaos  by  identifying  tribal  gods,  possessing  similar 
characters  but  of  many  different  lands,  as  different  forms, 

216 


Religion 


local  manifestations,  of  a  single  god.  But  the  attempts 
logically  to  consolidate  the  multitudinous  company  of 
all  the  heavenly  hosts  in  all  the  countries  within  the 
bounds  of  the  Roman  Empire  could  not  succeed  in  the 
presence  of  an  educated  and  highly  critical  society. 
Even  the  president  of  the  Roman  pantheon  could  not  be 
raised  to  the  height  of  an  imperial  divinity,  and  so  the 
Roman  Emperor  himself  had  to  submit  to  deification  for 
purely  practical  purposes. 

Thus  it  came  to  pass  that,  for  the  Hellenistic  Greeks 
and  the  Romans,  the  gods  withdrew  into  a  loftier  and 
mistier  empyrean.  Their  old  raison  d'etre  was  gone. 
They  no  longer  incorporated  the  vital  national  ideals 
that  had  given  them  form.  Each  of  them  alone  came  to 
be  an  almost  meaningless  entity,  a  name  and  a  memory 
but  little  more.  At  the  same  time  the  old  national  crowds 
were  tending  to  dissolve.  It  was  more  to  a  man  of  Tarsus 
that  he  was  a  Roman  citizen  than  that  he  was  a  Cilician. 
The  great  imperial  over-crowd  not  merely  submerged 
many  of  the  national  crowds  it  included,  but  caused 
them  actually  to  disintegrate.  Under  such  conditions 
there  was  no  place  for  the  national  gods.  There  were  no 
national  ideals  and  passions  for  them  to  incorporate. 
The  gods  went  the  way  of  the  kings,  and  Roma  caput 
mundi  took  their  place.  But  great  as  Rome  was,  great 
as  was  the  position  which  the  Roman  Emperor  filled,  he 
,  might  be  called  a  god,  worshipped  as  a  god,  but  he  failed, 
and  could  not  but  fail,  to  fill  the  spiritual  role  of  a  world- 
divinity  in  a  civilised  and  reflective  age. 

The  mere  existence  and  success  of  the  Roman  Empire, 
therefore,  implied  the  need  for  a  divinity  more  compre- 

217 


The   Crowd   in    Peace   and   War 

hensive  than  any  that  had  been  conceived  before.  No 
national  god  could  serve.  A  world-god  was  needed,  and 
the  creative  faculty  to  make  and  impose  one  on  the  vast 
population  of  the  Empire  seemed  to  be  lacking.  Egypt 
tried  her  hand;  so  did  Persia;  so  did  Judea; 
but  all  failed.  The  Sun  itself  was  not  divine  enough, 
even  when  combined  and  identified  with  the  Imperial 
power  on  earth.  Some  success  here  and  there,  in  the 
military  caste  or  in  some  other  sections  of  the  population, 
might  be  attained,  but  none  of  the  competing  religions 
succeeded  for  long.  In  the  struggle  for  existence  all  the 
would-be  imperial  divinities  were  choked  and  faded 
away. 

The  reason  is  fairly  obvious.  It  is  to  be  found  in  the 
fact  that  Roman  Imperialism  never  exalted  itself  into 
a  world-embracing  passion.  The  Roman  Empire,  though 
its  system  of  government  became  fairly  stable,  though 
its  laws  took  root  among  men,  though  its  prestige  for  a 
few  centuries  was  high  and  indeed  became  higher  as  its 
actual  strength  faded,  never  grouped  and  knitted  together 
into  a  firm  and  self-conscious  single  crowd  all  the  people 
of  the  Empire,  as  the  people  of  Egypt  or  Judea  or 
Assyria  had  been  knitted  and  wrought  together  into 
nations.  The  Roman  Empire  was  never  one  at  heart  as 
Ancient  Egypt  had  been  one.  It  follows  that  there  did 
not  exist  the  needed  all-embracing  passion  that  could 
find  expression  in  a  single  imperial  god.  And  yet  a 
new  and  higher  type  of  godhead  was  imperatively 
called  for,  all  the  old  gods  being  worn  out  and  having 
become  incredible.  It  was  a  condition  of  things  that 
never  existed  in  the  world  before,  and  it  produced  a  result 

218 


Reli 


gion 


which,  as  we  look  back  on  it,  seems  as  though  it  might  have 
been  foretold. 

Bear  in  mind  that  the  pax  romana,  in  that  it  was  the 
cause  of  a  loosening  of  national  and  other  ancient  social 
ties,  in  fact  of  a  breaking  up  of  old  crowds  into  their  con- 
stituent units,  resulted  in  a  relatively  strong  development 
of  individualism.  The  first  four  centuries  of  our  era 
produced  a  wonderful  crop  of  well-marked  and  differen- 
tiated individuals.  The  Empire  offered  wide  scope  for 
individual  initiative,  individual  administrative  capacity, 
individual  enterprise  and  resource.  Never  before  had 
the  mind  of  man  been  so  free.  Never  were  there  fewer 
orthodoxies  set  up.  Never  before  since  civilisation  began 
had  the  thoughts  or  actions  of  man  been  less  tramelled. 

It  follows  that  if  there  was  no  call  then  for  the  revela- 
tion of  a  new  imperial  divinity,  the  moment  had  come  for 
the  revelation  of  a  god  with  whom  each  individual  could 
enter  into  personal  relations;  and  this  was  what  Chris- 
tianity supplied.  Had  the  Christians  been  able  to  impose 
on  Rome  in  the  second  century  a  greater  crowd-divinity 
than  the  world  had  known  before,  they  might  have  given 
to  the  Roman  Empire  the  unifying  spiritual  force  which 
it  lacked,  and  for  lack  of  which  it  ultimately  fell  to  pieces. 
But  the  Christian  god  was  not  of  that  sort.  The  whole 
teaching  of  Christianity  as  set  forth  by  its  Founder  ap- 
plies only  to  individuals.  Christ  did  not  contemplate 
crowds;  his  words  contain  no  legislation  for  them.  He 
did  not  come  to  save  mankind  but  men.  He  did  not 
address  the  enthusiasm  of  multitudes,  but  aimed  at 
entering  as  "a  still  small  voice"  into  the  heart  of  each. 
There  is  not  a  word  about  crowd-ritual  from  him,  noth- 

219 


The   Crowd   in    Peace   and   War 

ing  about  great  assemblages  of  the  faithful.  His  fol- 
lowers are  all  thought  of  as  coming  to  him  one  by  one, 
each  for  a  new  heart,  each  intending  thenceforward  to 
love  his  neighbour.  "Who  is  my  neighbour?"  asked  an 
inquirer.  What  would  be  the  answer  to-day?  Humanity, 
the  suffering  human  crowd,  the  poor,  the  laggards  in  life's 
race  who  need  to  be  collectively  helped.  That  was  not 
Christ's  view.  For  him  the  neighbour  was  another  indi- 
vidual, to  be  individually  loved,  tended,  and  helped.  I 
need  not  enlarge  upon  this  point.  Anyone  who  knows 
the  Gospels  will  have  no  difficulty  in  filling  out  the  picture 
for  himself,  if  he  confines  his  attention  to  the  recorded 
words  ascribed  to  Christ.  Thus  it  came  to  pass  that 
the  Christianity  of  Christ  was  the  first  widely  successful 
individualistic  religion  the  world  had  ever  known,  and 
that  was  why  it  was  able  to  spread  at  the  time  when  it 
appeared.  The  moment  was  ripe  for  a  religion  of  per- 
sonal holiness.  The  individual  man  wanted  his  soul 
saved,  and  Christ  offered  to  save  it.  He  called  for  a 
change  of  heart  at  a  moment  when  many  men  desired, 
one  by  one,  each  after  his  own  fashion,  to  attain  a  higher 
spiritual  level.  The  Kingdom  of  Heaven  which  Christ 
promised  was  promised  to  each,  and  it  was  to  be  within 
each.  The  paradises  of  most  prophets,  what  are  they  but 
Utopian  socialistic  states,  with  each  individual  fitted 
into  his  place  and  obedient  to  the  common  law  and  organi- 
sation? Christ's  Kingdom  was  not  of  that  sort.  It 
depended  on  no  organisation,  no  groupings  of  hierarchies. 
It  was  a  state  of  mind,  an  internal  happiness,  the  union 
of  the  individual  with  God,  a  condition  independent  of 
time,  place,  or  circumstance,  a  dwelling  in  love,  that  is 

220 


Religion 

to  say  a  dwelling  of  each  believer  severally  in  God  and 
God  in  him. 

The  Christianity  of  Christ  was  in  fact  a  disintegrating 
rather  than  a  socially  constructive  religion.  It  sprang 
into  existence  when  the  old  societies  were  falling  to  pieces, 
when  the  old  ideals  were  dead,  when  the  emotions  that 
had  united  crowds  together  had  lost  their  power  to  bind. 
The  Gospel  Christian  was  called  upon  to  abandon  home, 
relatives,  dependents,  property,  everything,  to  the  new 
life.  He  was  called  upon  to  love  God  and  his  neighbour 
—  not  the  crowd  of  mankind  but  men,  each  individual 
man  with  whom  he  came  in  contact.  He  was  to  be  a 
"come-outer."  He  was  to  go  forth  and  preach  the  gospel, 
trusting  that  the  Lord  would  provide  for  him  the  neces- 
saries of  life.     His  renunciation  was  to  be  complete. 

It  was  impossible  for  Christianity  long  to  retain  this 
purely  individualistic  character.  Its  very  success  in- 
volved a  change.  As  soon  as  Christians  existed  in  any 
number  they  were  forced  by  the  nature  of  things  to  be- 
come communities,  little  crowds,  and  as  soon  as  that 
happened  the  normal  reactions  of  a  crowd  were  set  up. 
In  Egypt  indeed  ultra-individualistic  Christianity  was  car- 
ried on  for  a  time  by  a  vast  number  of  hermits.  That  was 
because  the  hermit  ideal  already  existed  there.  Buddh- 
ist missionaries  from  India  are  believed  to  have  visited 
Egypt  within  two  generations  from  the  time  of  Alexander 
the  Great.  This  mission  is  attributed  to  Asoka.  Per- 
manent traces  of  Buddhist  influence  from  before  the 
Christian  era  are  said  to  be  distinguishable  there.  Egyp- 
tian Gnosticism  contained  Buddhist  elements  as  Syrian 
Gnosticism    contained  Persian.     Philo    describes    Thera- 

221 


The   Crowd   in    Peace   and   War 

peutse  or  contemplative  monks  in  Egypt,  who  seem  to 
have  sprung  from  the  union  of  Alexandrian  Judaism  with 
the  precepts  and  modes  of  life  of  Buddhist  devotees.  In 
their  bodily  mortifications,  their  abandonment  to  con- 
templation, we  may  trace  such  an  affinity  to  Indian 
mystics  as  guarantees  for  both  a  common  origin.  Thus 
at  Alexandria  Greek  philosophy,  Judaism,  Zoroastrianism, 
Buddhism,  and  the  latest  developments  of  the  Egyptian 
religion  all  met  and  mingled.  It  was  into  this  turgid 
medium,  or  out  of  it,  that  Christianity  was  born. 

Small  wonder  then  that  in  Egypt  the  followers  of  the 
new    individualistic    faith    tried    many    an    experiment. 
Multitudes  of  them,  incited  by  Buddhist  example,  forsook 
all,  went  forth  into  desert  caves  and  Egyptian  hill-side 
tombs,  and  tried  to  lead  a  purely  individualistic  existence 
saving  their  own  souls.     But  pure  individualism  is  as 
fatal  to  what  is  best  in  man  as  pure  socialism.     The  her- 
mit life  as  led  by  these  men  was,  says  Mr.  Norman  Douglas, 
'an  atavistic  movement.     Under  the  influence  of  their 
'creed  they  reverted  perforce  to  the  more  bestial  traits 
'of  aboriginal  humanity.     They  were  thrust  back  in  their 
'  development.     They  became  solitaries,  animalesque,  and 
'  shy  —  such  as  we  may  imagine  our  hairy  progenitors  to 
'have  been.     Hence  their  dirt  and  vermin,  their  horror 
'of  learning,  their  unkempt  hair,  their  ferocious  inde- 
'pendence,  their  distrust  of  sunshine  and  ordered  social 
'  life,  their  foul  dieting,  their  dread  of  malign  spirits,  their 
'cave-dwelling  propensities  —  all  bestial  characteristics!" 
But  the  multiplication  of  these  creatures  terminated  their 
isolation.     They  crowded  one  another  into  communities, 
and  the  necessities  of  common  life  wrought  them  into 

2ii 


Religion 


societies,  incipient  crowds,  bound  to  develop  along  the 
lines  which  all  crowds  by  the  nature  of  man  necessarily 
follow.     This  was  the  origin  of  monasticism. 

If,  even  in  the  persons  of  hermits,  the  individualistic 
Christianity  of  Christ  had  to  be  socially  transmuted,  a 
corresponding  development  was  far  more  imperatively 
called  for  in  the  case  of  Christian  communities  living  in 
cities  and  consisting  of  men  and  women  having  to  do  the 
work  of  the  world.  In  the  Acts  of  the  Apostles  we  can 
watch  the  young  communities  forming.  The  Epistles 
enable  us  to  see  the  rudimentary  difficulties  they  had 
to  overcome.  At  Jerusalem  they  appear  to  have  tried 
pure  communism,  a  system  apparently  best  in  accord  with 
the  preaching  ascribed  to  Christ  himself,  but  that  experi- 
ment has  never  succeeded  anywhere,  at  any  time  of  the 
world's  history,  and  if  the  Christians  of  Palestine  ac- 
tually essayed  it,  with  them  too  it  failed.  But  wher- 
ever Christianity  penetrated,  communities  had  to  take 
shape.  "We  being  many,"  they  learned  to  say,  "are  one 
"body  in  Christ  and  every  one  members  one  of  another." 

St.  Paul  stands  forth  in  the  generation  succeeding  Christ 
as  the  great  organiser  of  the  new  faith.  He  it  was,  before 
all  others,  who  showed  how  to  weld  the  faithful  into  an 
organic  whole.  He  was  the  founder,  not  of  Christianity, 
but  of  the  Christian  crowd.  Membership  of  organised 
crowds  is  usually  easy  of  definition.  A  member  of  a 
school,  a  university,  a  club,  a  society,  a  nation,  becomes 
such  by  some  definite  public  act.  But  by  no  public  act 
can  a  man  become  a  follower  of  Christ,  as  defined  by 
Christ  himself.  A  follower  of  Christ  was  one  in  whom 
the  great  change  of  heart  demanded  by  Him  had  taken 

223 


The   Crowd   in    Peace   and    War 

place.  It  was  not  enough  to  be  baptised,  or  to  become, 
like  Judas,  an  avowed  adherent.  Open  confession  of  dis- 
cipleship  did  not  make  a  man  one  of  Christ's  flock.  The 
adhesion  demanded  by  Him  was  an  internal  invisible 
change  of  attitude  toward  God  and  man,  and  this  no 
outward  test  could  ever  avail  to  prove.  Hence  it  was 
impossible  to  form  a  visible  body  solely  consisting  of 
members  of  Christ.  A  community  of  persons  believing 
one  another  to  be  such  might  be  formed,  but  there  could 
be  no  certainty  that  all  members  of  the  community  were 
in  fact  followers  of  Christ.  So  clearly  was  this  recognised 
that  it  was  from  the  beginning  acknowledged  that  only  at 
the  Day  of  Judgment  would  a  true  separation  be  made 
between  the  sheep  and  the  goats.  If  all  members  of 
Christian  communities  had  become  ipso  facto  "sheep," 
a  Last  Judgment  of  separation  would  not  have  been 
necessary.  Hence  the  earliest  Christian  communities 
could  only  consist  of  persons  who  professed  and  called 
themselves  Christians,  submitted  to  the  rites  of  initia- 
tion, and  gave  verbal  acceptance  to  the  formulae  of  faith 
imposed  upon  them. 

It  follows  that  from  the  very  start  the  Christianity  of 
Christ  and  the  Christianity  of  the  Church  were  not  iden- 
tical. The  one  was  denned  by  an  internal  change,  the 
other  by  ceremonial  and  formula.  No  doubt  a  powerful 
effort  was  made,  especially  in  early  days,  to  obtain  all 
possible  evidence  of  the  change  of  heart  before  a  convert 
was  permitted  to  undergo  the  ceremonies  of  initiation. 
A  like  effort  was  also  collectively  made  to  invent  formulae 
of  faith  which  should  enshrine  the  teaching  of  Christ,  and 
that  only;   and  the  convert,  by  accepting  those  formulae, 

•      224 


Religion 

was  held  to  accept  the  teaching  of  Christ  as  the  law  of  his 
life.  But  such  were  rough  and  ready  criteria,  which  be- 
came less  and  less  efficient  as  the  Church  grew  in  size  and 
power,  and  altogether  lost  any  efficiency  when  they  were 
applied  to  young  children  and  even  infants.  If  the 
Christian  Church  of  the  first  century  consisted  mainly 
of  the  true  followers  of  Christ,  the  membership  of  the 
triumphant  Church  of  the  fourth  century  could  not  in 
the  nature  of  things  contain  more  than  a  relatively  small 
minority  of  such.  Between  the  crowd-opinion  of  such  a 
Christendom  and  the  pure  Gospel  of  the  Founder  of 
Christianity  there  had  therefore  to  be  a  wide  divergence. 

Formal  Christianity,  differing  as  it  has  patently  differed 
from  age  to  age  and  from  country  to  country,  has  at  each 
epoch  and  place  been  the  public  opinion  of  the  particular 
Christian  crowd  then  and  there  existent.  Just  as  Liberal- 
ism is  not  any  definite  set  of  formulated  principles,  but 
is  the  ideal  of  the  crowd  called  liberal  from  time  to  time, 
and  consequently  has  varied  so  widely  as  to  have  aimed 
at  one  time  towards  ends  which  it  has  shunned  at  another; 
so  Christianity,  starting  at  first  with  the  impulse  of 
Christ  himself  and  the  passion  kindled  by  him  in  his  dis- 
ciples, was  then  the  expression  of  that  passion,  but  only 
then.  A  crowd  including  all  who  professed  and  called 
themselves  Christian  once  formed,  the  Christianity  of 
the  future  was  whatever  that  crowd  should  make  it. 
It  was  bound  to  become  the  expression  of  the  independent 
life  of  that  crowd  and  to  take  on  the  forms  that  the  crowd 
would  from  time  to  time  impose  upon  it. 

The  Christian  crowd,  like  any  other,  as  soon  as  it  came 
into  existence  possessed  a  life  of  its  own,  and,  as  its  vital 

225 


The   Crowd  in    Peace   and   War 

principle  possessed  great  force,  the  Christian  crowd  had 
a  long  life  before  it,  and  consequently  required  a  long 
period  of  relatively  slow  growth  such  as  all  long-lived 
crowds  begin  with.  This  growth,  no  doubt,  was  conse- 
quential on  the  character  of  the  originating  germ,  as  the 
growth  of  an  oak  is  consequential  on  the  nature  of  an  acorn; 
yet  the  ultimate  full-grown  tree  is  also  fashioned  by 
external  circumstances  of  soil,  climate,  and  the  action  of 
animals,  and  so  also  what  the  Church  was  to  come  to  was 
decided  not  only  by  the  seed  of  life  implanted  in  it  by  its 
Founder,  but  by  the  circumstances  of  the  world  in  which 
it  flourished.  So  long  as  the  Christian  Church  exists  as 
a  continuous  crowd,  reaching  back  to  its  Founder  by  an 
unbroken  sequence  of  individuals,  and  whether  divided 
into  sub-crowds  or  not,  it  has  a  right  to  claim  that  it 
enshrines  the  Spirit  of  that  Founder,  for  such  continuity 
of  spirit  is  the  essential  property  of  all  long-lived  crowds. 
But  the  original  strain  becomes  in  process  of  time  a  very 
small  factor  in  the  ultimate  growth,  as  the  history  of  any 
church  or  any  nation  suffices  to  demonstrate. 

From  the  very  nature  of  all  crowds  it  follows  that  the 
Christian  crowd  in  its  earliest  beginnings  had  to  be  or- 
ganised as  it  grew.  In  proportion  to  the  strength  of  its 
organisation  the  individuality  of  its  members  became 
circumscribed.  The  first  followers  of  Christ  were  a 
number  of  detached  individuals,  and  their  faith  was 
altogether  individualistic.  The  full-grown  mediaeval 
church  was  a  powerful  socialism,  into  which  each  indi- 
vidual was  fitted  and  shaped  for  his  place,  no  opportunity 
being  left  for  individual  divergence  of  faith.  The  follow- 
ers of  Christ  gave  themselves  to  Him  —  body  and  soul. 

226 


Religion 


Mediaeval  Christians  were  born  into  an  organic  body  which 
imposed  on  them  a  complete  set  of  doctrines  and  a  per- 
fected ritual  which  they  were  compelled  to  accept  and 
follow.  No  two  conditions  could  be  more  radically 
different.  But  the  impulse  given  by  Christ  could  not 
have  endured  in  this  world  unless  it  had  been  carried  on 
by  a  crowd,  and  that  impulse  in  the  hands  of  a  crowd  had 
to  become  social,  and  had  to  lose  its  individualistic  form. 
The  social  shaping  of  Christendom  was  only  begun  by  the 
early  Church,  and  is  a  work  never  finished  but  only 
handed  on  from  age  to  age  to  be  reshaped  according  to  the 
ideals  of  each.  Thus  it  could  not  but  come  about,  if 
Christianity  was  to  survive  at  all,  that  it  must  take  on 
different  shapes  in  different  parts,  and  in  particular  that 
the  apparently  fundamental  difference  of  nature  between 
the  peoples  of  the  East  and  of  the  West  must  bring  about 
marked  divergencies  between  Eastern  and  Western  forms 
and  formula?. 

As  soon  as  the  organisation  of  the  mixed  crowd  of  true 
and  merely  professing  Christians  began  to  take  shape,  and 
the  necessity  of  things  involved  the  development  of  ritual 
and  the  definition  of  sacred  scriptures  and  dogmas,  an 
accretion  of  conceptions  and  traditions  from  earlier  reli- 
gious bodies  could  not  be  avoided.  Christ  contemplated 
the  gathering  together  of  "two  or  three"  in  His  name, 
and  for  them  neither  ritual  nor  liturgy  was  needed;  but 
when  assemblies  grew  to  contain  hundreds  and  even  thou- 
sands of  worshippers  both  rituals  and  liturgies  became 
essential.  Worship  itself,  however,  was  no  new  thing. 
Men  had  worshipped  to  the  best  of  their  powers  since  the 
earliest  times  of  which  we  have  record.     Ritual  had  thus 

227 


The   Crowd   in    Peace   and   War 

been  elaborated,  many  rituals,  and,  though  we  know  little 
about  them,  we  know  the  sufficient  fact  that  elaborate 
religious  rituals  did  exist  all  over  the  civilised  world  at  the 
time  when  Christianity  was  taking  shape.  The  mere  fact 
that  the  object  of  worship  was  changed  —  however  sim- 
plified and  elevated  —  did  not  render  existing  rituals 
wholly  valueless.  The  individualistic  follower  of  Christ 
did  not  need  them  for  private  worship  in  his  own  chamber, 
but  the  mixed  Christian  crowd  did  need  them,  and  could 
not  do  otherwise  than  adapt  to  collective  Christian  worship 
such  portions  of  existing  rituals  as  might  be  made  to  serve 
that  purpose. 

So  also  was  it  with  dogma;  so  too  with  the  forms  re- 
quired by  the  legend-making  instinct,  which  is  always 
present  in  crowds,  though  at  that  time  it  was  much  stronger 
than  in  our  own  day  it  remains,  corrected  and  controlled 
as  it  now  is  by  the  serious  impediment  of  the  prolific 
printing-press.  Any  crowd  at  that  time  possessed  the 
then  existing  raw  material  of  legend  andlof  dogma  in  its 
own  heart.  Its  passion  of  admiration  for  a  man  could  only 
find  expression  in  the  forms  then  existent.  Its  faith,  if  it 
was  to  be  expressed  for  it  in  any  form  of  words  at  all, 
could  only  use  the  dogmatic  forms  then  existing.  Thus 
the  Christian  crowd  in  its  struggles  to  grow,  to  organise 
and  define  itself,  and  to  get  expression  for  the  vitality 
within  it,  had  perforce  to  use  many  a  pagan  form  and 
ceremonial,  which  by  degrees  became  modified  under  the 
stress  of  internal  and  exterior  contention. 

The  individualism  of  original  Christianity  continued  to 
manifest  itself  in  one  respect,  long  after  individual  free- 
dom had  been   suppressed  within  the  Christian  body. 

228 


Religion 

This  was  in  the  semi-deification  granted  by  the  Christian 
crowd  to  its  leaders,  living  and  dead.  No  great  religious 
movement  in  the  world  has  produced  so  many  outstanding 
individual  leaders  as  Christianity.  It  was  not  the  Founder 
alone  who  remained  a  great  inspiring  Individual,  The 
early  Christian  centuries  are  signalised  by  the  number  of 
great  names  they  have  handed  down,  and  of  marked  and 
influential  personalities  whose  individual  characters  have 
been  recorded  and  are  held  in  honour.  Such  are  the 
Fathers  and  the  uncounted  multitude  of  the  Saints.  Many 
of  these  latter,  indeed,  never  in  fact  existed,  but  were  crea- 
tions of  the  legend-making  imagination  of  the  crowd,  — 
Christianised  forms  in  some  cases  of  ancient  local  gods,  in 
others  mere  creatures  of  inspired  fancy.  But  even  when 
they  were  true  historical  personages,  the  crowd,  reacting  as 
crowds  will  from  the  effect  produced  upon  them  by  some 
compeller,  cast  back  on  to  the  memory  of  the  great  man 
some  of  the  emotion  he  had  aroused  in  them,  and  thus 
invested  him  with  imaginary  powers  and  miraculous 
accomplishments,  expressed  in  forms  essentially  poetic. 
The  legends  of  the  saints,  though  thus  in  form  often  untrue, 
were  in  fact  the  quite  truthful  expression  of  the  crowd's 
emotions  when  those  legends  arose,  and  this  whether  the 
saints  in  question  had  been  real  people,  or  wholly  or  partly 
the  creation  of  fancy.  In  so  far  as  they  were  saints  it 
was  the  aspect  of  them  which  the  crowd's  fancy  beheld, 
and  to  which  it  gave  legendary  shape,  that  was  fashioned 
into  sainthood,  and  thus  all  saints  are  to  be  regarded  as 
creations  of  fancy  even  when  fancy  had  a  historical  per- 
sonage to  crystallize  around. 

If  the  great  leaders  who  create  new  crowds,  or  give  a 

229 


The   Crowd   in    Peace   and   War 

new  direction  to  crowds  existent,  are  of  necessity  very 
interesting  personages  for  the  student  of  history,  the  great 
personages  who  never  existed  at  all,  but  were  created  by 
the  fancy  of  crowds,  are  no  less  important  and  often  far 
more  delightful.  Nay,  of  some  of  them  it  may  be  affirmed 
that  they  have  done  more  for  the  uplifting  of  the  hearts  of 
successive  generations  than  was  accomplished  by  any  save 
a  very  few  actually  once  alive  heroes.  Only  since  the  days 
in  which  contemporary  written  records  of  events  have 
been  made,  with  the  intent  of  truthful  narration,  has  it 
been  possible  to  draw  any  kind  of  fairly  definite  line  be- 
tween what  a  person  actually  was  and  what  the  crowd 
thought  him  to  be,  —  with  the  result  that  epic  poetry  has 
been  banished  off  the  face  of  the  earth.  Go  further  back 
and  you  arrive  (very  soon  too)  at  a  time  in  which  indi- 
vidual fact  and  social  legend  are  so  inextricably  inter- 
woven that  it  is  impossible  to  separate  them.  The  ideal 
characters  of  the  past  are  not  so  much  the  images  of  indi- 
viduals who  once  lived  as  they  are  incarnations  of  the 
human  crowd  in  the  midst  of  which  they  acted;  and  the 
crowd,  in  describing  them,  pictured  its  own  aspirations. 
Thus  Roland  of  the  Song,  which  Taillefer  sang  before 
the  host  at  Hastings  —  what  was  he  but  the  ideal  of 
knightly  courage  and  honour?  There  was  indeed  a  noble 
soldier,  Hruodland,  governor  of  the  Breton  March,  who 
fell  in  a  rear-guard  action  at  Roncesvalles,  when  Charle- 
magne was  returning  over  the  Pyrenees  from  a  rather 
inglorious  campaign  in  Spain.  Nothing  more  is  known 
about  him;  but  that  he  died  a  glorious  death  may  well 
have  been  a  true  tradition.  Upon  that  single  fact  a  vast 
legendary  structure  was  built  up,  when  the  growing  spirit 

230 


Religion 

of  chivalry  seized  upon  the  romantic  times  of  the  founder 
of  the  Holy  Roman  Empire  and  expressed  its  young  and 
splendid  ideals  in  the  form  of  the  mediaeval  Carlovingian 
legend.  This  could  not  have  happened  had  there  been 
contemporary  newspaper  reporters  to  set  down  the  facts. 
The  story  of  early  Christianity  is  similarly  glorified  by  the 
projection  back  on  to  the  past  of  the  ideals  of  triumphant 
Christianity.  Thereby  was  produced,  not  the  bald  nar- 
rative of  mere  events,  but  the  splendidly  imaginative  and 
truly  inspired  narrations,  which  crystallized  and  expressed 
in  vital  and  undying  form  the  faith  by  which  the  whole  of 
Christian  society  was  quickened,  and  fashioned  into  a 
crowd  palpitating  with  life  —  the  life  which  reorganised 
Europe  after  the  destruction  of  the  social  organism  that 
had  been  Rome. 

The  Christian  crowd,  though  it  replaced,  did  not  de- 
stroy the  Roman  crowd.  The  Roman  crowd  died,  worn 
out,  when  the  gods  died.  It  was  because  the  Roman 
crowd  was  dying  that  the  Christian  crowd  arose.  It  arose 
because  it  alone  then  fulfilled  the  needs  of  a  day  when 
the  gods  were  dead.  In  the  third  century  we  behold  the 
two  crowds  side  by  side,  the  one  disintegrating,  the  other 
crystallizing;  the  one  losing,  the  other  gaining  strength; 
the  one  saddled  with  the  burden  of  a  worn-out  organisa- 
tion and  a  dead  faith,  the  other  instinct  with  a  new  and 
formative  vitality.  The  new  crowd  had  to  succeed, 
because  it  alone  could  absorb  the  inroading  barbarians 
and  thus  fashion  the  new  world.  The  Empire  was  there- 
fore compelled  to  unite  itself  to  the  new  Church,  whose 
hierarchies  already  possessed  a  considerable  power  of 
government  which  imperial  officers  were  tending  to  lose. 

231 


The   Crowd  in    Peace  and   War 

Thus  before  long  the  Roman  world  became  nominally 
Christian,  and  the  organisation  of  the  Christian  crowd 
could  not  remain  a  voluntary  matter  but  had  to  be  an 
affair  of  laws  and  compulsion,  thereby  opening  a  wider 
gulf  between  the  individualistic  religion  of  the  Founder 
and  the  organised  socialistic  religion  raised  upon  that 
foundation. 

•  Primitive  Christianity,  however,  though  thus  cov- 
ered out  of  sight,  never  entirely  ceased  from  the  earth. 
Its  true  nature  could  not  be  wholly  forgotten  while  the 
Christian  scriptures  remained  accessible  to  whoever  could 
read.  Individual  followers  of  Christ,  though  not  in  all 
ages  discoverable  by  the  historian,  must  always  have  ex- 
isted; and  from  time  to  time  they  made  efforts  to  revive 
the  individualistic  religion  of  the  Founder.  Such  efforts, 
however,  could  not  be  favourably  regarded  by  the  official 
class  of  the  organised  Church.  Sometimes  they  adopted, 
but  only  to  regulate,  a  particular  movement;  sometimes 
they  forcibly  suppressed  one.  All  mystics  are  individu- 
alistic Christians.  Mysticism  has  always  been  in  fact  a 
revolt,  more  or  less  clearly  perceived  to  be  such,  against 
the  formal  Christianity  of  the  organised  Church.  It 
would  be  interesting  to  follow  down  through  the  centuries 
the  successive  emergings  of  the  individualistic  Chris- 
tian spirit;  but  that  would  lead  us  too  far.  When  at 
length  the  printing  press  spread  the  Bible  abroad  and 
placed  it  in  the  hands  of  all  who  could  read,  the  greatest 
of  such  reactions  took  place,  and  the  Reformation  was  the 
result.  Then  the  essential  opposition  between  the  Chris- 
tianity of  the  Gospels,  with  its  appeal  to  the  individual, 
and  the  Christianity  of  the  Church,  with  all  its  socialistic 

232 


Religion 


sanctions  and  organisations,  became  patent;  and  the  Bible 
was  openly  recognised  as  a  danger  to  the  organised  body. 

But  the  new  individualistic  Christians  of  Reformation 
days  were  no  better  able  than  the  Early  Christians  had 
been  to  maintain  existence  without  themselves  becoming  a 
crowd.  As  soon  as  they  did  so,  the  new  crowd  reacted 
upon  its  religion  in  exactly  the  same  way  as  before :  dog- 
mas, ritual,  organisation,  orthodoxy,  compulsion  —  in  fact 
the  identical  sequence  repeated.  And  then  new  individu- 
alistic revolts  took  place  against  the  new  bodies,  as  before 
against  the  old;  and  the  end  is  not  yet.  Moreover,  the 
new  bodies  in  their  turn  became  entangled  with  the  State 
just  as  the  early  Church  had  been  entangled  with  the 
Empire.  Wars  of  religion  followed,  in  the  name  of  Christ, 
till  the  very  nadir  of  the  Christianity  of  Christ  was  reached 
when  the  ridiculous  but  practical  peace-treaty  formula 
was  arrived  at  —  cujus  regio  ejus  religio  I 

Yet  the  vitality  of  individualistic  Christianity  is  no  less 
strong  to-day  than  it  was  in  the  First  Century.  When- 
ever social  Christianity  breaks  down,  as  by  the  wearing 
out  of  its  organisation  it  frequently  must,  there  is  indi- 
vidualistic Christianity  waiting  in  the  background  poten- 
tially ready  to  take  its  place.  The  relation  between  the 
individual  and  "the  man  Christ  Jesus"  is  one  that  de- 
pends upon  no  organisation,  no  Church,  no  State  recogni- 
tion. It  may  be  as  vital  to-day  as  eighteen  hundred  years 
ago.  It  is  the  force  that  Christian  reformers  of  all  ages 
fall  back  upon.  The  "love  of  Christ"  constrains  them, 
not  the  power  of  the  Church,  and  because  it  constrains 
each  individually  it  may  operate  anywhere  and  at  any 
time,  altogether  independently    of    social  organisms,  or 

233 


The   Crowd   in    Peace  and   War 

governments,  or  dogmas,  or  rituals.  Thus  it  remains  to 
this  day  the  single  indestructible  vital  force  by  which  the 
Christianity  of  Christ  has  kept  returning  to  a  world  whose 
socialistic  tendencies  must  always  operate  to  drive  it 
away. 

We  often  hear  the  phrase,  "a  Christian  nation."  It  is 
claimed  that  a  Christian  nation  should  adopt  a  certain 
kind  of  policy  and  should  refrain  from  certain  acts  as 
unworthy  of  it.  Now  there  is  not  and  never  can  be  such 
an  entity  as  a  Christian  nation.  The  adjective  and  the 
noun  are  incompatible;  they  mutually  exclude  one  another. 
Christianity  is  the  religion  of  men.  An  elephant  cannot 
be  a  Christian.  Christianity  postulates  an  individual 
man  with  a  human  body,  mind,  and  soul  of  his  own.  A 
crowd  possesses  none  of  these  elements.  It  is  a  beast, 
admittedly  of  high  order,  but  it  is  not  a  man  and  does  not 
possess  the  normal  qualities  and  equipment  of  a  man. 
Men  can  be  Christians  and  can  show  their  Christianity  in 
their  conduct  to  one  another  and  even  in  their  attitude 
towards  crowds;  but  crowds  cannot  act  as  Christians 
towards  one  another.  An  individual  crowd  cannot  be  a 
Christian;  contemporary  crowds  cannot  form  a  Chris- 
tian society.  Only  men  can  form  a  society.  Entirely 
independent  crowds,  such  as  nations,  cannot  be  governed 
by  the  laws  of  Christ,  which  were  not  laid  down  for  them 
any  more  than  for  tigers.  The  laws  of  Christ  apply 
only  to  men.     Crowds  are  another  sort  of  animal. 

It  is  assumed  that  a  society,  all  of  whose  units  are 
Christians,  is  necessarily  a  Christian  society;  that  a  society 
all  of  whose  units  conduct  their  lives  on  Christian  principles 
will  necessarily  conduct  its  collective  life  on  those  prin- 

234 


Religion 

ciples.  Nothing  could  be  less  true.  Neither  internally  in 
the  relation  of  the  State  to  individual  citizens,  nor  exter- 
nally in  the  relation  of  State  to  State,  can  the  Christianity 
of  Christ  control  crowds.  A  Chinese  official  wrote,  "Your 
"civilisation  has  never  been  Christian,  whereas  ours  is 
"Confucian  through  and  through.  .  .  .  With  you  economic 
"relations  come  first."  The  reason  is  simple.  Confu- 
cius thought  in  terms  of  crowds,  Christ  in  terms  of  indi- 
vidual men.  Therefore  the  Chinese  "look  first  to  the 
"society  and  then  to  the  individual;"  Christianity  regards 
the  individual.  Only  the  Judaism  beneath  it  is  a  true 
crowd-religion. 

The  relations  between  one  crowd  and  another  are  not 
of  the  same  kind  as  the  relations  between  two  individuals. 
The  latter  may  be  Christians  and  may  behave  to  one 
another  as  such,  but  crowds  cannot  be  Christians  at  all, 
not  being  men.  Nations  indeed  conduct  their  mutual 
relations  through  individuals,  but  those  cannot  act  as  in- 
dependent men  would  act,  because  they  are  not  indepen- 
dent men  but  crowd-representatives,  and  they  must  act 
as  their  crowds  would  have  them.  Two  diplomatists  may 
have  a  deep  affection  for  one  another,  and  yet  it  may  be 
their  business  to  declare  to  one  another  that  their  nations 
are  at  war.  The  relations  of  crowd-representatives  then 
cannot  be  governed  by  the  principles  that  govern  the 
relations  of  independent  individuals.  The  latter  may 
behave  to  one  another  as  Christians;  the  former  cannot. 
It  is  the  first  duty  of  Christians  to  love  one  another. 
How  is  that  possible  for  crowds?  If  love  is  the  fulfilling 
of  the  law,  crowds  cannot  fulfil  the  law.  Crowds  cannot 
love  one  another.     They  may  join  in  hostility  to  a  third 

235 


The   Crowd   in    Peace   and   War 

crowd,  and,  in  consequence  of  co-operating  against  it,  they 
may  come  to  value  one  another,  so  long  as  that  co-opera- 
tion lasts;  but  that  is  all.  They  cannot  love  one  another 
as  men  love.  The  power  of  mutually  loving  does  not  re- 
side in  crowds.  Conceive,  if  you  can,  of  a  crowd  that  was 
"meek  and  lowly  of  heart,"  and  of  one  that  "turned  its 
"back  to  the  smiter."  It  is  needless  to  multiply  illustra- 
tions. Would  it  have  been  possible  for  the  Sermon  on 
the  Mount  to  be  delivered  to  the  sovereigns  of  a  number  of 
countries,  not  as  individuals  but  as  kings?  It  would  have 
had  no  application  to  their  circumstances.  As  individuals 
they  could  singly,  of  course,  have  been  thus  addressed, 
but  not  as  the  executive  officers  of  peoples,  acting  on  the 
advice  of  responsible  ministers,  themselves  the  expression 
of  the  emotion  of  their  crowds. 

"Come  unto  me  all  ye  that  are  weary  and  heavy  laden 
"and  I  will  give  you  rest,"  said  Christ.  The  words 
would  be  meaningless  addressed  to  a  social  organism. 
Christianity  is  concerned  not  only  with  the  present  but 
with  the  future  life  of  men.  It  offers  them  salvation  or 
damnation  in  a  world  to  come.  What  world  to  come  can 
there  be  for  the  Roman  Empire?  Christianity  has  noth- 
ing to  offer  to  crowds,  which  have  no  soul  to  be  saved,  no 
world  to  come  to  expect,  and  which  look  not  to  a  future 
life  but  to  a  long  life  on  earth,  exceeding  manyfold  the 
life-time  of  a  generation. 

The  only  kind  of  religion  possible  to  a  nation  is  one  of 
the  type  of  the  ancient  pagan  national  religions,  in  which 
the  nation  worshipped  itself  in  a  deified  form.  Con- 
ceivably all  the  crowds  in  the  world  might  be  united  in  a 
collective  worship  of  humanity,  and  that  may  even  some 

236 


Religion 

day  come  to  pass  in  a  form  we  cannot  yet  conceive.  Such 
a  religion,  however,  will  be  one  altogether  unsuited  to  the 
needs  of  individuals.  We  cannot  invent  or  conceive  of 
a  religion  suited  equally  to  individuals  and  to  crowds. 
These  belong  to  different  categories  of  living  things,  and 
their  attitude  to  the  infinite  unknown  must  be  different, 
because  the  kind  of  knowledge  they  have  of  it,  or  emotion 
toward  it,  is  different.  A  crowd  indeed  cannot  be  religious 
in  the  same  way  as  an  individual.  The  union  of  the  soul 
with  God  which  the  mystic  desires  and  labours  to  arrive 
at  by  help  of  religious  observance  is  not  possible  for  any 
crowd.  Even  united  worship  does  not  carry  to  the  Throne 
of  Grace  the  crowd,  but  only  the  individuals  composing 
it,  though  their  emotions  may  be  quickened  by  fellowship. 
Hence  when  crowds  have  attempted  to  make  Christianity 
a  crowd  affair,  identifying  the  nation  with  the  religious 
body,  it  has  been  necessary  for  them  to  invent  a  repre- 
sentative worship,  which  in  a  general  way  may  be  com- 
pared with  other  representative  institutions.  Nations 
must  have  their  worshipping  done  for  them,  and  this  can 
only  be  accomplished  by  an  artificial  convention.  The 
mediaeval  Church  provided  priests,  monks,  and  so  forth 
to  perform  religious  ceremonies  on  behalf  of  the  crowd. 
That  was  one  of  the  forms  taken  by  social  Christianity, 
against  which  of  course  individualistic  Christianity  re- 
volted. Priesthoods,  symbolical  services,  elaborate  rituals 
and  so  forth  —  these  all  belong  to  socialistic  representa- 
tive religion  and  are  necessarily  contrary  to  the  spirit 
and  needs  of  personal  religion:  hence  the  anti-ritualism 
of  the  Evangelical  Movement  of  the  last  century;   hence 

on  the  contrary  the  ritualism  of  the  socially  religious 

237 


The   Crowd  in    Peace   and   War 

Oxford  Movement  which  followed  as  a  reaction  against  it 
—  examples  of  the  endless  see-saw  between  the  primitive 
individualistic  Christianity  of  Christ  and  the  socialistic 
push  to  paganise  it  which  no  crowd  of  Christians  can 
avoid. 

To  put  the  matter  in  briefest  form,  while  all  crowds  are 
moral,  none  are  religious.  Even  a  church  cannot  be 
collectively  religious.  The  history  of  the  Churches  proves 
this,  as  we  have  just  shown.  Governments,  Churches, 
and  other  crowds  have  seized  upon  religion  at  certain  stages 
of  their  history  and  availed  or  attempted  to  avail  them- 
selves of  its  sanctions  to  enforce  their  own  laws  and  morali- 
ties. By  this  means  morals,  a  social  thing,  and  religion, 
a  personal  thing,  have  often  been  and  still  are  confused 
together.  It  is  not  even  correct  to  speak  of  Christian 
morals.  Morals  are  the  product  of  society,  but  Chris- 
tianity was  the  revelation  of  Christ  alone,  and  He  certainly 
never  confused  morals  with  his  law  of  love.  Christ  indeed 
upon  some  notable  occasions  defied  the  morals  of  his  day. 
Right  and  wrong  are  not  identical  with  moral  and  im- 
moral, though  how  often  we  hear  an  immoral  action  spoken 
of  as  wrong.  It  may  be  wrong,  or  it  may  not  be,  but  it  is 
not  wrong  because  it  is  immoral.  All  actions  are  immoral 
which  are  contrary  to  the  emotions  of  the  crowd  that 
creates  the  morals  in  question.  But  an  action  which  is 
immoral  from  the  point  of  view  of  some  crowd  may  be 
perfectly  harmless  or  even  meritorious  from  the  point  of 
view  of  a  particular  unit  of  the  said  crowd.  Nevertheless 
if  there  is  a  religion  conterminous  with  a  given  crowd,  that 
religion  will  give  to  the  crowd's  morals  the  sanctions  of 
"right"  and  "wrong,"  whilst  if  the  crowd's  government  is 

238 


Religion 

identified  with  its  religious  organisation,  the  laws  will 
tend  more  and  more  to  be  so  shaped  as  to  impose  its 
morality  by  enactment.  What  a  remarkable  feat  of 
governmental  interference  in  the  past  generations  it  has 
been  to  impose  on  the  public  mind  the  idea  that  marriage 
ordinances,  for  example,  correspond  to  some  eternal  law 
of  right  and  wrong,  and  that  to  set  them  at  defiance  is 
necessarily  to  do  a  wicked  action!  To  accomplish  that 
result  religion  had  first  to  appropriate  a  foreign  area  of 
morals,  and  then  government  had  to  usurp  the  authority 
of  religion.  If  so-called  Christian  morals  are  in  very 
truth  a  part  of  Christianity,  it  must  follow  that  Chris- 
tianity is  merely  the  outcome  of  a  crowd  movement,  not 
of  a  divine  revelation. 

It  must  not,  however,  be  forgotten  that  in  the  evolution 
of  a  people  the  evolutions  of  its  government,  its  morals, 
and  the  religions  of  its  citizens  are  taking  place  simultane- 
ously, and  sometimes,  though  far  from  always,  by  equal 
stages.  Where  a  harmony  exists  between  all  three,  a 
happy  state  of  things  is  arrived  at;  and  such  a  harmony 
has  characterised  the  culminations  of  some  important 
epochs  of  civilisation.  Thus  in  the  great  age  of  Chivalry 
and  Feudalism  the  religion  of  the  people  matched  very 
closely  the  moral  and  governmental  ideals  of  the  day. 
No  one,  however,  would  claim  that  the  present  age  is 
marked  by  any  such  congruity.  It  is  an  age  of  rapid 
change  alike  in  governmental  and  religious  ideals,  whilst 
much  of  our  morality  is  obviously  transitional.  Under 
these  conditions  the  individual  is  fortunately  able  to  pre- 
serve a  good  deal  of  freedom,  not  only  of  thought  but  of 
speech.     He  may  differ  from  one  of  the  great  crowds 

239 


The   Crowd   in    Peace   and   War 

without  offending  all  simultaneously.  This  is  why  it  has 
recently  come  to  pass  in  Great  Britain  that  the  law  of 
marriage  in  the  State  differs  from  the  law  of  marriage  in 
some  of  the  churches,  whilst  the  attitude  of  public  opinion 
towards  marriage  is  somewhat  undecided  and  does  not 
heartily  agree  with  that  either  of  the  State  or  of  the 
churches.  Obviously  when  State,  church,  and  public 
opinion  are  all  in  hearty  agreement  together  on  such 
questions,  the  individual  will  be  so  powerfully  controlled 
by  the  forces  of  all  three  bent  in  the  same  direction  as  to 
lose  his  freedom  in  the  presence  of  the  mighty  crowd.  How 
efficient  in  controlling  individuals  the  alliance  between 
government  and  religion  has  been  was  clearly  demon- 
strated by  the  third  article  of  the  same  Treaty  of  Verona 
already  cited.     It  runs  as  follows:  — 

"Convinced  that  the  principles  of  religion  contribute 
"most  powerfully  to  keep  nations  in  the  state  of  passive 
"obedience  which  they  owe  to  their  princes,  the  high  con- 
tracting parties  declare  it  to  be  their  intention  to  sustain, 
"in  their  respective  States,  those  measures  which  the 
"clergy  may  adopt,  with  the  aim  of  ameliorating  their 
"own  interests,  so  intimately  connected  with  the  preser- 
vation of  the  authority  of  Princes;  and  the  contract- 
ing powers  join  in  offering  their  thanks  to  the  Pope  for 
"what  he  has  already  done  for  them,  and  solicit  his  con- 
stant co-operation  in  their  views  of  submitting  the 
"nations." 

This  was  written  barely  a  century  ago;  how  strangely 
antiquated  it  seems  to  us!  Yet  even  so  recently  as  in  the 
days  of  Ruskin's  activity  he  could  claim  that  "  our  National 
"Religion  is  the  performance  of  church  ceremonies  and 

240 


Religion 

"preaching  of  soporific  truths  (or  untruths)  to  keep  the 
"mob  quietly  at  work  while  we  amuse  ourselves."  The 
emancipation  of  religion  from  crowd-control  is  the  first 
essential  for  Christian  religious  life.  The  State,  if  it 
controls  religious  organisation  or  is  controlled  thereby, 
will  and  always  must  use  the  sanctions  of  religion  to  en- 
force the  decisions  of  the  State,  or  the  power  of  the  State  to 
enforce  the  dogmas  and  promote  the  interests  of  the  reli- 
gion. Christianity,  the  Christianity  of  the  Gospels,  does 
not  lend  itself  to  such  an  office.  The  whole  of  Christianity 
is  within  the  capacity  of  a  child  to  grasp.  All  that  crowds 
have  ever  added  to  it  has  been  unchristian  incomprehen- 
sibilities, incredible  dogmas,  and  unnecessary  ceremonials, 
invented  solely  for  collective  purposes. 


241 


CHAPTER  XV 
OVERCROWDS 

«  TF  independent  crowds  of  a  similar  kind  come  in  con- 
tact one  with  another,  an  instinctive  mutual  hostility 
arises,  except  when  two  or  more  crowds  unite  in  hos- 
tility to  a  third  or  to  another  group  of  crowds.  Similarly 
if  one  crowd  divides  into  two  independent  sections,  these 
sections  will  always  be  hostile  to  one  another.  This  dan- 
gerous but  fundamental  characteristic  of  crowds  is  due 
to  the  fact  that  every  crowd  desires  to  expand  indefinitely, 
and  that  the  existence  of  a  rival  crowd  obviously  puts  a 
limit  on  its  expansion^  No  better  instances  of  the  mutual 
hostility  of  similar  crowds  can  be  cited  than  organised 
religious  bodies  afford,  especially  those  calling  themselves 
Christian.  If  they  were  truly  Christian  they  would  love 
one  another,  but  being  crowds  they  cannot,  and  therefore 
are  not  truly  Christian.  Every  religious  body  conceives 
of  itself  as  the  depository  of  divine  truth.  Its  undeniable 
aim,  therefore,  must  be  to  expand  and  embrace  the  whole 
world,  unless  its  religion  is  limited  by  race,  like  that  of 
the  Jews,  or  in  some  similar  fashion.  The  great  religious 
crowds  all  claim  universality  and  must  therefore  be  jeal- 
ous of  one  another  and  in  fact  mutually  hostile.  This 
hostility  is  not  due  to  their  religion  but  to  the  fact  that 
they  are  crowds  and  cannot  help  possessing  the  universal 
characteristic  of  crowds. 

242 


Overcrowds 

Observe  how  the  great  public  schools  dislike  one  another. 
It  is  a  dormant  emotion  no  doubt,  but  it  exists.  The 
Eton  and  Harrow  cricket  match,  not  so  long  ago,  used  to 
end  with  a  scrimmage  that  would  have  developed  into  a 
free  fight  had  there  been  no  superior  force  to  intervene. 
Oxford  does  not  love  Cambridge  any  better  than  Harrow 
loves  Eton.  Neighbouring  towns  do  -  not  regard  one 
another  with  affection.  I  have  heard  an  estimable  mayor 
of  Chatham  state  his  honest  opinion  of  the  adjacent  City 
of  Rochester.  It  was  not  complimentary!  Manchester 
does  not  love  Liverpool,  nor  I  believe  does  Boston  adore 
New  York.  All  nations  tend  to  mutual  hostility.  Eng- 
land, Scotland,  Wales,  and  Ireland  get  along  together,  but, 
if  all  their  common  interests  as  against  the  rest  of  the 
world  could  be  put  out  of  mind,  their  remaining  emotion 
towards  one  another  would  be  the  reverse  of  affectionate. 
It  is  not  necessary  to  labour  this  point,  seeing  that  the 
fact  is  universally  admitted  and  has  been  established  by 
the  experience  of  mankind  in  all  ages. 
VjWhen,  however,  an  overcrowd  is  formed,  which  em- 
braces and  contains  two  or  more  subordinate  crowds,  the 
mutual  hostility  of  these  subordinate  crowds  remains 
dormant  so  long  as  they  are  conscious  of  their  union  in 
the  overcrowd.  If  their  union  is  brought  about  by  the 
active  hostility  of  the  overcrowd  to  some  other  crowd  or 
overcrowd,  it  will  be  all  the  more  efficaceous  in  suppressing 
internal  jealousies  and  frictiofy*  Thus  Kikuyu  showed 
how  rival  Christian  communities  can  unite  in  the  presence 
of  active  heathendom,  the  only  protestant  against  such 
friendly  co-operation  being  a  bishop  who  felt  himself  more 
strongly  drawn  to  an  imaginary  "Catholic"  overcrowd 

243 


The   Crowd  in    Peace   and   War 

than  to  one  composed  of  local  Christian  communities  of 
different  complexions.  It  was  in  fact  a  case  where  three 
overcrowds  were  in  question,  a  "Catholic,"  a  Protestant, 
and  a  heathen,  the  Protestant  union  being  the  result  of 
conflict  with  the  heathen,  whilst  the  Catholic  union  arose 
from  a  different  and  unconnected  ideal.  The  Protestant 
overcrowd  consequently  availed  to  absorb  all  the  Chris- 
tian bodies  and  individuals  except  those  that  were  over- 
whelmed by  the  Catholic  ideal.  The  mutual  hostility 
between  the  Protestant  and  Catholic  crowds  was  strong 
enough  to  prevent  them  from  being  united  even  by  their 
common  hostility  to  heathendom  and  Islam. 

I  am  told  that  in  the  University  of  Toronto  there  exists 
or  existed  an  informal  alliance  between  the  Romanist  and 
the  Methodist  students  as  against  the  Baptists,  and  that 
this  alliance  manifests  itself  in  the  football  field  in  matches 
between  a  joint  team  of  those  against  a  team  of  these. 
The  effect  of  such  co-operation  must  be  to  soften  the  other- 
wise strong  opposition  between  Romanists  and  Metho- 
dists, who  cannot  fail  to  be  thus  induced  to  look  on  one 
another  with  less  of  crowd-prejudice  in  proportion  to  the 
strength  that  the  overcrowd  tie  may  develop.  Is  this  a 
sign  of  that  dangerous  Americanism,  so  distasteful  to  the 
ultramontane  authorities  who  have  not  been  led  into  the 
temptations  involved  in  playing  football  in  a  combined 
Roman-Wesley  an  team  against  a  common  opponent? 

Every  great  crowd,  such  as  a  nation,  is  built  up  out  of 
a  complex  structure  of  subordinate  crowds,  and  they  of 
smaller  social  groups,  and  so  on  down  to  the  component 
individuals.  Subordinate  crowds,  in  fact,  are  the  limbs 
and  organs  of  a  great  body  politic.     By  uniting  and  sub- 

244 


Overcrowds 

ordinating  them,  limiting  the  area  of  operation  of  each, 
and  preventing  them  from  mutual  conflict  of  an  active 
kind,  it  enables  them  to  co-operate  to  the  good  of  the 
whole  organism.  Thus  it  comes  to  pass  that  an  overcrowd 
is  not  hostile  towards  subordinate  crowds  so  long  as  they 
are  content  to  remain  subordinate,  but  only  if  they  en- 
deavour to  become  conterminous  with  it  and  to  supplant 
its  organisation  by  their  own.  I  think  it  was  Mr.  Mallock 
who  described  the  social  aggregate  as  a  litter  of  beasts  or 
groups,  each  having  a  consciousness  of  its  own  and  inter- 
ests of  its  own,  which  usually  do  not  coincide  with  those 
of  the  rest,  but  are  opposed  to  them.  The  overcrowd 
imposes  upon  these  rival  interests  the  limitations  which 
enable  the  groups  to  live  together  in  peace  and  even  in 
happiness. 

How  does  it  accomplish  this  result?  Partly  by  the  ma- 
terial force  given  to  it  with  the  general  consent  of  the 
public  opinion  of  the  overcrowd,  but  much  more  by  the 
greater  force  usually  possessed  over  the  passions  of  indi- 
viduals by  the  ideal  of  the  greater  crowd  over  the  ideal  of 
the  component  bodies.  Oxford  does  not  abstain  from 
attacking  Cambridge  in  force  through  fear  of  police  and 
military,  but  because,  for  all  their  rivalry,  Oxford  and 
Cambridge  are  united  by  stronger  common  emotions  and 
ideals  than  those  that  divide  them.  When  they  think 
only  of  each  other  it  may  be  with  disparagement,  but  as 
against  the  rest  of  the  world  they  embrace  each  other  with 
a  mutual  pride.  Their  members  belong  to  a  common 
class.  They  are  inspired  by  each  Alma  Mater  with  similar 
standards;  they  start  the  life  of  men  with  a  similar  hall- 
mark, besides  belonging  to  a  common  country  in  the  fash- 

245 


The   Crowd  in   Peace   and   War 

ioning  of  whose  destinies  they  look  to  take  an  important 
part.  Thus  the  overcrowd  mightily  inspires  them,  and 
their  small  local  hostility  is  a  trifle  set  against  the  crowd- 
forming  ideals  they  possess  in  common. 

The  same  is  likewise  true,  for  example,  with  the  people 
of  the  North  and  South  of  England,  who  have  many 
divergencies  in  ideal  and  look  towards  one  another  with 
no  small  lack  of  sympathy  in  certain  aspects.  But, 
against  the  world,  North  and  South  are  one  —  English- 
men all  —  notwithstanding  their  differences  of  blood  — 
Norse,  Angle,  Saxon,  Jute,  Celt,  Norman,  and  what-not. 
Though  far  from  being  wrought  into  a  unity  of  blood 
by  intermarriage,  they  are  welded  into  one  by  the  English 
ideal  which  all  share  alike.  Thus  also  it  is  or  should  be 
with  all  the  classes,  groups,  and  crowd-subdivisions  of  all 
sorts  within  the  body  of  a  nation.  No  one  need  desire  to 
obliterate  or  even  weaken  their  diverse  characters  or  to 
erase  the  lines  that  limit  each  from  each.  All  that  is 
needed  is  that,  however  subdivided,  they  should  likewise 
be  united  above  their  subdivisions  by  the  possession  of  a 
common  passion,  called  patriotism,  which  if  strong  enough 
will  suffice  to  make  every  smaller  section  innocuous  to  the 
nation  as  a  whole. 

What  in  fact  is  a  Nation?     It  is  not  merely  a  number 

of  individuals  dwelling  within  a  particular  geographical 

area,  nor  a  population  talking  a  common  language,  nor 

is  it  to  be  defined  by  the  possession  of  a  common  stock  or 

blood-relationship.     A  nation  is  the  whole  population  of 

an  area,  organised  into  a  single  crowd  by  the  possession 

of  a  common  ideal.     It  is  patriotism  that  makes  a  nation, 

not  vice  versa.     Thus  Africanders  will  be  a  nation,  if  they 

246 


Overcrowds 

are  not  so  already,  when  their  feeling  of  unity  overpowers 
and  submerges  their  attachment  to  their  component  race- 
crowds.  There  is  no  reason  even  to  desire  an  individual 
to  forget  whether  he  is  of  British  or  Dutch  origin.  That 
is  an  immaterial  detail  once  the  passion  of  the  overcrowd 
is  stronger  than  that  of  the  section.  When  that  has  been 
brought  about  a  nation  exists;  and  the  common  ideal 
once  created  is  liable  to  grow  into  that  kind  of  passion 
which,  as  Mr.  Tim  Healy  informed  Mr.  Winston  Church- 
ill, can  be  recognised  when  it  shows  itself  to  be  "something 
"that  men  willingly  die  for." 

Patriotism  is  a  very  curious  force  and  operates  on  indi- 
viduals in  all  manner  of  unsuspected  ways,  so  that  the 
moment  that  feeling  or  prejudice  can  be  invoked  in  favour 
of  some  object  the  tendency  of  the  public  will  be  to  range 
themselves  on  its  side.  The  reader  will  be  refreshed  by 
an  absurd  instance.  I  have  before  me  the  report  of  an 
action  brought  against  the  sellers  of  certain  oysters  which 
it  was  claimed  were  unfit  for  food.  Counsel,  to  obtain 
the  help  of  prejudice  on  his  side,  as  against  the  oysters, 
emphatically  asserted  "that  it  was  important  that  the 
"public  should  know  that  they  were  only  imported  oysters 
"and  were  not  Natives"! 

Leaving  out  of  consideration  for  the  moment  the  rela- 
tion of  patriotism  to  war,  it  may  here  be  asserted  that  the 
supreme  value  of  that  emotion  is  not  in  provoking  hostil- 
ity or  resisting  the  rivalry  of  other  countries,  but  in  its 
unifying,  nation-making  force.  That  man  is  virtuously 
patriotic  whose  emotion,  shared  with  and  drawn  from  the 
overcrowd,  is  much  more  powerful  than  the  emotion 
shared   with   and   drawn   from   any   subordinate   crowd. 

247 


The   Crowd   in    Peace   and   War 

If  a  man  loves  his  town,  his  church,  his  order,  his  class, 
or  any  other  crowd  to  which  he  belongs,  more  than  he 
loves  his  country,  he  lacks  patriotism;  he  is  a  sectional 
traitor.  He  puts  the  part  before  the  whole.  He  may  love 
an  individual  more  than  he  loves  his  country,  for  patriot- 
ism is  a  crowd-emotion  only  and  is  not  concerned  with 
individuals;  but  if  he  is  more  loyal  to  a  sub-crowd  than 
to  the  national  overcrowd  he  is  a  traitor  to  the  nation. 
Some  traitors  have  been  heroes  and  have  had  good  per- 
sonal reasons  for  their  treason,  but  it  has  been  treason 
none  the  less  —  a  crowd-sin,  which,  if  it  is  to  be  individ- 
ually meritorious,  must  have  sound  intellectual  reasons  in 
its  favour. 

Where  I  now  sit  writing  I  have  but  to  raise  my  eyes 
to  see  the  Gateway  beneath  which  Sir  Thomas  Wyatt, 
the  rebel,  bade  farewell  to  his  young  wife  and  infant  child 
when  he  rode  away  to  put  himself  at  the  head  of  the  Kent- 
ish Rebellion  —  the  object  of  which  was  to  prevent  the 
hateful  Spanish  marriage  of  Queen  Mary  and  Philip  II. 
He  was  a  traitor,  but  he  was  not  therefore  necessarily  a 
wicked  man.  There  have  been  traitors  and  traitors.  It 
is,  however,  only  under  quite  exceptional  circumstances 
of  revolution  and  the  like  that  such  complicated  opposi- 
tions of  ideals  arise  to  puzzle  the  actions  of  men.  In 
normal  times  a  nation  must  be  possessed  throughout  by 
the  single  patriotic  ideal  which  subordinates  all  the  minor 
crowds  to  the  body  politic.  What  Mr.  Roosevelt  said  of 
republics  is  equally  true  of  all  nations,  whatever  their 
system  of  government:  "No  republic  can  permanently 
"exist  when  it  becomes  a  republic  of  classes,  when  the 
"man  feels  not  the  interest  of  the  whole  people  but  the 

248 


Overcrowds 

"interest  of  the  particular  class  to  which  he  belongs,  or 
"fancies  that  he  belongs,  as  of  prime  importance."  That 
is  a  particular  case  of  a  general  law.  A  crowd  is  a 
being  fashioned  by  an  emotion.  An  overcrowd  can  only 
exist  when  the  emotion  that  generates  it  is  more  powerful 
than  the  several  emotions  by  which  its  subsidiary  crowds 
are  generated. 

Failures  of  patriotism  are  not  common  with  sub-crowds 
in  our  own  day,  but  they  occur  sometimes  in  the  case  of 
modern  socialistic  bodies.  Here  is  an  instance  which 
happened  in  Chicago  Dec.  30,  1904.  There  had  been  a 
ghastly  fire  in  the  Iroquois  theatre  and  numbers  of  people 
were  killed  and  injured  by  the  flames.  About  that  time 
a  strike  had  occurred  among  the  livery-stable  drivers. 
"An  employer  went  to  the  strikers'  headquarters,  where 
"the  men  had  congregated,  and  asked  the  men  to  go 
"to  the  Iroquois  theatre  to  help  to  remove  the  injured. 
"The  strikers  flatly  refused."  Here  the  overcrowdship, 
not  only  of  the  nation  but  even  of  the  human  race,  failed 
to  operate  against  bitter  sectional  self-consciousness. 
When  sub-crowds  of  such  strength  are  formed  their  exist- 
ence becomes  a  peril  to  the  body  politic.  Aristocracies, 
churches,  trade  unions,  and  other  crowds  have  at  times 
been,  like  the  heartless  Chicago  strikers,  supremely  mis- 
chievous. 

Where  a  crowd  is  not  contained  within  the  limits  of  a 
nation  but  spreads  abroad  through  the  world,  with  differ- 
ent sections  in  different  nations,  another  kind  of  conflict 
arises.  A  local  subdivision  of  it  will  then  be  within  the 
hypnotic  area  of  two  unco-ordinated  overcrowds.  Such 
is  the  condition  of,  for  example,  the  English  Roman  Cath- 

249 


The   Crowd  in    Peace   and   War 

olics:  they  are  both  part  of  England  and  part  of  the 
Roman  Church.  It  is  conceivable  that  a  situation  might 
arise  when  the  interests  of  the  two  would  be  antagonistic, 
and  a  man  would  have  to  choose  between  his  patriotism 
and  his  orthodoxy.  He  would  have  to  become  a  traitor 
or  a  heretic !  In  either  case  he  would  be  driven  to  commit 
a  crowd-offence.  Such  antinomies  are  rare  and  cannot 
endure  in  a  world  where  the  very  existence  of  civilisation 
depends  on  the  co-ordination  of  crowds. 

Another  case  of  difficulty  arises  under  modern  condi- 
tions, when,  owing  to  the  movement  of  population,  men 
are  almost  compelled  to  change  their  nationality  as  eco- 
nomic conditions  drive  them  to  change  their  home  from 
one  country  to  another.  This  entails  the  process  called 
naturalisation.  As  a  rule  it  is  sound  to  assume  that  a  man 
will  quickly  catch  the  patriotism  of  the  country  to  which 
he  removes,  and  that  that  of  the  country  from  which  he 
comes  will  gradually  fade  away,  at  least  from  priority.  An 
individual,  fearing  the  crowd,  is  not  likely  to  utter  unpa- 
triotic sentiments  in  presence  of  the  public  of  his  new  home. 
He  will  be  far  more  likely  to  err  hypocritically  in  the  other 
direction.  Hence  the  ill-founded  belief  in  most  countries, 
and  especially  in  new  countries,  that  immigrants  are 
far  more  rapidly  absorbed  into  the  new  nationality  than 
is  in  fact  the  case.  In  America  it  is  common  to  hear  it 
asserted  that  five  years'  residence  will  turn  any  foreigner 
into  a  good  American.  We  in  England  used  to  nourish 
some  such  illusion  about  naturalised  Germans.  But  now 
I  read  (since  the  great  war  began)  a  different  story. 
Examples  of  absorption,  "so  far  as  they  can  be  usefully 
"consulted,   seem   to   show   that   the   case  varies   to   a 

250 


Overcrowds 

"perplexing  degree.  One  man  is  thoroughly  Anglicised 
"or  Americanised,  while  another  remains  just  as  good  a 
"German  as  though  he  had  continued  to  live  on  Ger- 
"man  soil.  Herr  Chamberlain  whose  writings  are  so 
"dear  to  the  Kaiser's  heart  and  so  popular  in  Germany 
"was  an  Englishman,  but  appears  to  have  been  pretty 
"effectually  Teutonised  judging  from  his  diatribes  against 
"England."  Nevertheless  Dr.  Nicholas  Murray  Butler, 
President  of  Columbia  University,  New  York,  says  that 
the  United  States  have  proved  "that  race  antagonisms 
"tend  to  die  away  and  disappear  under  the  influence  of 
* '  liberal  and  enlightened  political  institutions . ' '  He  speaks, 
however,  without  authority  when  he  continues:  "We 
"have  huge  Celtic,  Latin,  Teutonic,  and  Slavic  populations 
"all  living  here  at  peace  and  in  harmony;  and,  as  years 
"pass,  they  tend  to  merge,  creating  new  and  homogeneous 
"types.  The  Old  World  antagonisms  have  become  mem- 
"ories.  This  proves  that  such  antagonisms  are  not  myste- 
"rious  attributes  of  geography  or  climate,  but  that  they 
"are  the  outgrowth  principally  of  social  and  political  con- 
ditions. Here  a  man  can  do  about  what  he  likes,  so  long 
"as  he  does  not  violate  the  law;  he  may  pray  as  he  pleases 
"or  not  at  all,  and  he  may  speak  any  language  that  he 
chooses."  Of  course  in  normal  times  within  the  area  of 
the  American  overcrowd  such  sub-crowds  will  have  no 
occasion  to  come  to  blows,  but  until  the  United  States 
have  been  at  war  with,  say,  Germany,  is  there  a  possi- 
bility of  knowing  whether  the  German-American  is  more 
German  or  more  American? 

There  has  been  no  considerable  change  in  racial  stocks 
in  the  United  Kingdom  since  the  Norman  Conquest,  yet 

251 


The   Crowd  in    Peace   and  War 

our  people  are  far  from  being  merged  into  a  homogeneous 
type,  and  that  notwithstanding  the  fact  that  for  some  700 
years  they  were  not  impeded  in  racial  mixing  by  the  exist- 
ence of  a  prolific  printing-press.  Now  the  press  tends 
to  keep  alive  racial  sub-crowds.  The  Irish-Americans, 
the  German-Americans,  the  Dago- Americans,  the  Slav- 
Americans,  and  so  forth,  have  each  their  own  press  and  will 
probably  maintain  their  sub-crowdship  much  longer  than 
would  have  been  possible  in  illiterate  days.  Only  a  pa- 
thetic faith  (in  things  as  they  essentially  are  not)  can  be- 
lieve otherwise.  Race  patriotism  has  had  a  good  deal  more 
to  do  with  the  attitude  of  United  States  citizens  toward  the 
belligerents  in  the  present  great  war  than  it  would  be 
politic  for  either  party  to  acknowledge;  and  curiously 
enough  we  English  would  rather  have  the  support  of  the 
people  of  our  race  on  the  other  side  of  the  ocean  upon  the 
solid  ground  of  race-prejudice  than  because  we  are  engaged 
in  a  just  war! 

In  normal  days  in  the  United  States,  as  much  as  but 
no  more  than  in  other  civilised  countries,  national  public 
opinion  will  be  stronger  than  any  sectional  opinion,  and 
the  overcrowd  will  contain  all  sectional  crowds  in  peace 
and  harmony,  or  at  least  in  enough  of  peace  and  harmony 
for  all  practical  purposes.  The  upheaval  of  war  is,  how- 
ever, the  supreme  test,  and  it  has  been  applied  to  the  Brit- 
ish Empire  with  results  that  all  the  world  can  behold  and 
understand.  Here  then  is  the  value  of  patriotism.  It 
is  the  unifying  force,  as  precious  in  time  of  peace  as  in 
war-time,  and  most  efficient  under  the  great  inquest  of 
war  if  it  has  been  long  and  beneficently  operative  through- 
out many  peaceful  generations. 

252 


Overcrowds 

In  thus  referring  to  empires  and  wars  we  have,  how- 
ever, outrun  our  subject,  which  has  so  far  led  us  to 
consider  nations.  Empires  and  races  present  larger  prob- 
lems. To  weld  together  into  a  single  polity  divers  na- 
tions has  been  attempted  again  and  again  these  two 
thousand  years  and  more.  The  ancient  way  was  to 
carry  off  a  conquered  population  bodily  from  their  home. 
The  organisation  of  a  national  crowd  thus  treated  was 
broken  up;  it  tended  to  disintegrate  into  its  units  and 
those  to  recombine  with  other  people  in  a  new  home. 
Charlemagne's  translation  of  a  large  body  of  Saxons 
was  about  the  last  successful  effort  of  this  kind.  In 
later  days  the  effort  has  frequently  been  made  to  de- 
nationalise a  conquered  nation.  Cromwell  tried  to  dena- 
tionalise the  Irish  and  failed.  Napoleon  succeeded  in 
deprovincialising  the  French,  but  denationalisation  has 
never  been  successful.  Only  peoples  and  governments 
lacking  in  true  political  gift  have  even  made  the  attempt 
in  modern  times.  Germans  and  Russians  have  essayed 
to  Germanise  or  Russify  the  Poles.  The  Finns  have  been 
similarly  attacked.  These  and  like  efforts  have  quite 
failed. 

Meanwhile  the  United  States  demonstrated  the  modern 
possibilities  of  federation.  By  the  extraordinary  ability 
and  skill  of  statesmen  trained  in  the  Revolutionary  War, 
the  thirteen  revolted  colonies  were  at  length  welded  vol- 
untarily together  into  a  federation,  whereby  they  were 
enabled  to  preserve  their  individuality  and  yet  to  form 
what  proved  to  be  the  nucleus  of  a  strong  imperial  state. 
That  lesson  was  not  lost  upon  Great  Britain,  which  slowly 
learnt  by  repeated  experiment  that  the  way  to  attach  sec- 

253 


The   Crowd   in    Peace   and   War 

tional  states  to  a  larger  overcrowd  is  for  the  including  body 
to  make  it  plain  that  its  first  duty  shall  be  to  preserve  the 
inviolability  of  the  local  independence  of  the  included 
states.  The  wisdom  of  this  policy  has  become  so  appar- 
ent that  at  last,  and  not  fully  till  quite  recently,  the  fun- 
damental principle  of  empire  may  be  said  to  have  been 
established,  namely  that  the  basis  of  empire  is  the  guaran- 
teed preservation  of  the  local  freedom  of  each  included 
nation,  the  unshattered  crowdship  of  each  sectional  com- 
ponent crowd. 

This  is  the  vital  principle  which  has  enabled  the  British 
Empire  to  hold  together  in  the  present  time  of  trial.  It 
is  by  at  least  a  recognition  of  it  that  Russia  was  led  to 
proclaim  the  future  unity  and  subordinate  independence 
of  Poland.  It  is  becoming  clearer  that  only  by  the  appli- 
cation of  this  principle  can  the  Balkan  problem  be  solved. 
Thus  the  principle  of  Home  Rule  for  Nations  is  at  length 
emerging  as  the  true  foundation  of  empires,  and  there 
can  be  little  doubt  that,  in  the  world-epoch  now  beginning, 
that  will  be  one  of  the  chief  structural  principles  of  the 
organisation  of  mankind.  It  enlists  on  the  side  of  the 
central  organisation  the  strongest  of  all  crowd-instincts  — 
that  of  self-preservation.  Who  shall  say  how  far  the  inte- 
gration of  nations  into  world-states  may  go  on  this  basis; 
even  perhaps  at  long  last  into  the  ultimate  formation  of 
a  world-embracing  overcrowd. 
Pv  A  Another  kind  of  overcrowd,  differing  from  an  empire 
/v|i  .v1"  in  that  it  is  altogether  lacking  in  crowd-organisation,  is 
4^  the  Race.  We  speak  freely  of  the  races  of  mankind;  we 
recognise  that  race  is  an  important  element  in  human 
structure  and  relations,  yet  no  one  could  delimit  existing 

254 


Overcrowds 

races  or  even  accurately  define  them.  It  is  indeed  gen- 
erally assumed  that  a  race  is  mainly  to  be  defined  by  the 
possession  of  a  common  blood.  We  hear  the  Jews  called 
a  pure  race.  Since  about  the  fifth  century  of  our  era  the 
Jews  may  not  have  intermarried  with  other  peoples,  except 
in  the  case  of  those  who  ceased  to  be  Jews ;  but  before  that 
time  there  was  no  such  isolation.  In  the  Roman  Empire 
the  Jews  freely  accepted  adhesions  from  without.  Where 
are  all  the  Phoenicians  and  other  Semites  who  were  scat- 
tered over  the  ancient  world?  Probably  many  of  them 
were  merged  into  the  Jewish  body.  You  may  see  in  Eng- 
land to-day  men  with  heads  that  absolutely  repeat  the  type 
of  the  Assyrian  man-headed  bulls.  Moreover  it  is  only 
necessary  to  compare  the  Russian,  Hungarian,  Spanish, 
Levantine,  and  North  European  Jews  to  be  convinced 
that  they  form  together  a  race  no  more  "pure"  than,  for 
example,  the  English  race.  As  for  that  we  know  its  his- 
tory. No  one  can  pretend  that  it  is  anything  but  a  mix- 
ture in  which  very  numerous  varieties  of  blood  are  united 
but  not  blended.  As  a  matter  of  fact  intermarriage  does 
not  blend.  After  a  thousand  years  of  intermarrying, 
Saxon,  Celt,  and  Iberian  are  not  blended. 
j  Race,  in  fact,  is  nothing  but  a  convenient  term  for  a 
Kind  of  overcrowd,  possessing  in  common  a  more  or  less 
definite  group  of  idealsy  Within  the  Slav,  the  German, 
the  Latin,  the  English-speaking  races,  there  is  an  indefi- 
nite mixture  of  different  stocks,  but  each  of  these  over- 
crowds possesses  by  historical  descent  a  certain  ideal, 
and  all  these  ideals  differ  from  one  another.  Race  is  not 
always  the  word  for  a  multitude  of  people  who  inherit  a 
common  stock  of  blood,  but  rather  for  a  multitude  inherit- 

255 


The   Crowd  in    Peace   and   War 

ing  a  common  stock  of  traditions,  a  common  outlook  on 
life  up  to  a  certain  point.  Unity  of  ultimate  governmental 
authority  makes  an  Empire;  but  a  race  recognises  no 
such  link.  An  Empire  must  be  more  or  less  organic:  a 
race  is  not  organic  at  all.  A  race  exists  solely  by  the 
inheritance  of  ideals.  Time  alone  can  fashion  one.  It 
cannot  be  made  suddenly  by  economic  forces,  nor  by 
geographical  propinquity,  nor  by  the  genesis  of  a  new 
religion.  By  nothing  but  long  historical  sequence  can  a 
race  be  created.  It  is  the  outcome  of  crowd-memory 
alone  and  possesses  therefore  the  pride,  the  moral  force, 
and  the  momentum  which  belong  to  all  the  fine  old  things. 

If  ever  humanity  as  a  whole  is  to  become  an  organic 
overcrowd  it  will  not  be  by  the  junction  of  races  but  of 
Empires.  Empires  grow;  races  only  endure.  Empires 
look  to  the  future;  races  to  the  past.  Empires  act; 
races  remember.  Nations  "slowly  wise"  gradually  assem- 
ble themselves  together  as  needs,  usually  in  the  form  of 
wars,  compel.  What  has  formed  the  British  Empire? 
Primarily  the  opposition  of  other  powers.  The  loyalty 
of  Canada  was  born  from  fear  of  the  United  States.  The 
German  peril  has  been  a  vivifying  force  in  recent  dec- 
ades. The  great  war  is  increasing  our  internal  cohesion. 
If  ever  the  British  Empire  becomes  strongly  organised  it 
will  be  thanks  to  Germany;  just  as  German  internal 
unity  arose  from  fear  of  France.  No  such  forces  act 
upon  races.  They  do  not  grow  into  Empires;  they  emerge 
from  them. 

The  greatness  of  an  Empire  depends  upon  its  power, 
its  numbers,  its  prosperity  —  not  so  the  greatness  of  a 
race.     That  depends  on  its  history  and  its  ideals.     The 

256 


Overcrowds 

prosperity  of  a  race  does  not  depend  on  its  greatness; 
it  depends  upon  the  chance  whether  its  gifts  and  ideals 
match  a  given  day.  No  one  will  deny  to  the  Spanish 
race  the  honours  of  greatness;  but  these  are  not  its  great 
days  because  its  ideals  do  not  match  the  present  day. 
The  same  may  be  said  of  the  Chinese.  With  races  as 
with  animals,  their  prosperity  depends  on  their  adapta- 
tion to  their  environment  —  not  merely  their  physical 
environment,  but  their  moral  environment;  whether 
their  ideals  are  in  general  harmony  with  those  best  adapted 
to  succeed  at  a  particular  time.  The  bold  Spanish  ad- 
venturer was  of  all  men  best  equipped  to  be  a  conquistador. 
That  type  of  man  has  little  opportunity  for  the  display 
of  his  qualities  to-day.  Western  Europe  has  not  always 
been  ahead  of  the  rest  of  the  world.  Its  folk  were  bar- 
barians when  Greece  gave  civilisation  to  the  Mediter- 
ranean area.  In  the  thirteenth  century  Venetian  Marco 
Polo  marvelled  at  the  greater  prosperity  and  capacity  of 
China  compared  with  Western  Europe.  Western  Europe 
and  America  have  really  only  come  right  to  the  front 
along  with  science.  When  the  age  of  science  passes,  as 
some  day  it  may,  the  white  race  may  probably  enough 
sink  below  the  first  rank,  and  who  knows  what  now  obscure 
group  will  arise  to  replace  it?  Ere  then  perhaps  the 
federation  of  the  world  will  have  been  effected. 

Professor  Karl  Pearson  claims  that  a  nation,  properly 
organised  for  the  struggle  for  existence  among  competing 
nations,  "must  be  a  homogenous  whole,  not  a  mixture 
"of  superior  and  inferior  races."  Such  a  mixture,  how- 
ever, is  what  all  nations  are,  and,  as  it  seems  to  me,  must 
everlastingly  remain.     Every  individual,  every  class,  may 

257 


The   Crowd   in    Peace   and  War 

have  equal  political  rights  with  every  other,  but  that  does 
not  affect  the  essential  and  enduring  superiority  and 
inferiority  of  racial  layers  within  a  nation.  On  the  con- 
trary, it  may  be  argued  that  the  very  success  of  a  nation 
in  the  world's  struggle  may  be  forwarded  by  its  com- 
position out  of  such  successive  layers  of  differently  gifted 
races,  each  better  adapted  than  the  rest  to  some  par- 
ticular branch  of  those  complicated  human  activities 
which  go  to  make  up  the  life  of  a  modern  nation.  May 
it  not  be  the  case  that  what  is  properly  called  the  caste 
system  is  the  result  of  the  action  of  natural  laws  and  is 
therefore  an  essential  factor,  whether  realised  or  not,  in 
the  structure  of  a  modern  nation? 

In  America  the  term  "caste"  is  misapplied  in  popular 
usage,  where  it  is  supposed  to  be  equivalent  to  the  arti- 
ficial ordering  of  social  ranks.  Castes  are  racial  layers 
within  a  people,  especially  when  those  layers  corre- 
spond to  occupations.  Thus  if  all  Jews  were  financiers 
and  all  financiers  Jews  they  would  be  a  caste;  there  is  a 
tendency  for  a  certain  group  of  Jews  to  become  such  in 
most  civilised  and  progressive  countries.  India  is  the 
historic  land  in  which  the  caste  system  is  most  easily 
studied  because  there  openly  acknowledged,  and  also 
because  in  some  parts  of  India  it  is  enforced  by  social 
sanctions.  In  the  modern  world  we  can  see  the  caste 
system  taking  visible  form  more  clearly  in  the  United 
States  than  in  any  other  country,  because  there  the 
influx  of  immigrants  of  many  different  races  has  been  so 
voluminous  during  recent  times.  The  tendency  is  for 
different  trades  or  occupations  to  fall  into  the  hands  of 
groups  of  persons  of  different  nationalities  respectively, 

258 


Overcrowds 

and  this  by  the  operation  of  purely  economic  and  social 
forces.  Bootblacks  are  generally  Dagoes.  Navvies  are 
likely  to  be  Hungarians.  Masons  are  frequently  North 
Italians  —  and  so  forth.  Time  does  not  tend  to  obliter- 
ate but  to  accentuate  such  divergencies  of  function; 
modern  labour  organisations  tend  in  the  same  direction. 
Men  of  a  common  origin  and  race  act  together  and  organ- 
ise themselves  more  potently  than  do  men  of  diverse  origin. 
The  freer  the  political  institutions  of  a  country,  there- 
fore, the  more  easy  is  it  for  caste  to  arise,  in  fact  if  not 
in  name.  Nor  does  the  obliteration  of  the  memory  of 
their  origin  make  much  difference.  Adaptability  to  given 
types  of  labour  is  as  much  hereditary  as  any  other  gift, 
and  will  act  without  the  help  of  nomenclature. 

The  strength  of  great  Britain  is  largely  due  to  the 
astonishing  mixture  of  races  contained  within  these 
islands,  and  to  the  fact  that  so  many  of  them  came  in  by 
conquest.  The  earliest  stock  of  which  we  have  vague 
knowledge  was  that  which  inhabited  the  country  in 
Neolithic  days.  It  was  doubtless  already  very  mixed. 
On  to  that  came  conquering  raiders  of  the  Celtic  race 
in  successive  waves:  Goidelic,  Brythonic,  and  perhaps 
others.  Belgic  invaders  added  their  contingent  in  South 
and  East.  Next  followed  the  Romans;  then  the  various 
Teutonic  tribes,  Jutes,  Angles,  and  Saxons;  after  them 
Scandinavians  of  sorts;  last  of  all  Normans.  With  them 
the  conquering  aristocracies  ended.  Each  in  its  turn 
had  added  a  layer  to  the  population,  and  each,  by  con- 
quest, had  demonstrated  the  possession  of  some  superior 
quality  to  that  of  those  it  overcame.  The  era  of  physical 
conquest  was  not,  however,  the  end  of  all  accretions.     A 

259 


The   Crowd   in   Peace   and   War 

country  capable  of  defending  itself  may  still  import  folk, 
either  of  inferior  gifts  suited  to  perform  rough  labour,  or 
of  special  talents  enabling  them  by  aid  of  economic  fitting 
to  establish  themselves  at  a  higher  level.  Such  were  the 
Flemish  weavers;  such  again  the  industrious  and  able 
Jews,  who  added  a  new  and  most  valuable  factor  to  the 
complex  races  already  settled  and  mutually  adapted. 
The  whole  of  this  complex  forms  a  union  of  inferior  and 
superior  races,  some  gifted  with  powers  of  administration, 
some  with  powers  of  manual  skill,  some  merely  with  an 
almost  blind  physical  strength.  You  have  only  to  look 
at  a  miscellaneous  assemblage  of  Englishmen  to  become 
aware  of  the  wide  divergence  of  racial  types  of  which 
they  are  composed.  The  Neolithic  Englishman  is  still 
discoverable,  the  red  Celt  also,  and  the  fair-haired  Norse- 
man, the  highbred  Norman  too,  the  sturdy  Fleming,  the 
Huguenot,  and  all  the  different  races  that  compose  the 
Jews  —  they  are  as  identifiable  as  if  they  had  been  newly 
brought  together  from  as  many  different  lands.  They 
are  a  mixture  of  inferior  and  superior  races,  and  inter- 
marriage does  not  racially  blend  them.  Children  revert 
to  the  different  ancestral  types  and  perpetuate  their 
various  abilities  and  disabilities.  Thus  it  must  be,  always 
and  everywhere,  in  spite  of  all  social  ordinances  and  con- 
stitutional impediments  intended  to  put  everybody  on 
a  level. 

Notwithstanding  such  racial  divergence  the  whole  mass 
forms  a  nation,  and  it  does  so  not  by  uniformity  of  blood 
or  even  of  language,  but  by  the  possession  of  a  common 
national  emotion,  a  common  patriotism,  a  single  crowd- 
constructive  ideal.     It  is  this  that  so  obviously  divides 

260 


Overcrowds 

the  English  Jew  from  the  German  Jew  and  often  makes 
the  former  just  as  much  an  Englishman  as  the  purest 
descendant  of  Anglian  forefathers.  It  is  this  that  unites 
and  animates  the  whole  body  politic,  that  swamps  the 
individual,  happily,  willingly,  and  completely,  in  the  great 
crowd.  By  such  results  is  crowd-formation  justified.  It 
creates  out  of  a  vast  multitude  of  units  of  varying  gifts, 
capacities,  and  values,  an  integral  whole,  a  living  organ- 
ism, wherein  as  in  any  other  animal  some  parts  are  made 
for  honour  and  some  for  dishonour.  We  are  all  members 
of  one  body,  depending  on  each  other,  not  for  equal  gifts 
but  for  dissimilar  gifts,  and  it  is  in  the  due  and  free  subor- 
dination of  the  lower  to  the  higher  and  the  due  and  free 
functioning  of  all  the  parts  that  the  health  of  the  whole 
consists. 

I  have  used  the  words  inferior  and  superior  as  applied 
to  layers  of  the  population  of  any  country,  not  however 
intending  thereby  to  postulate  a  permanent  relation  be- 
tween them,  but  merely  as  describing  their  relation  at  a 
given  moment  in  respect  of  their  several  adaptabilities  to 
the  conditions  of  a  particular  day.  Thus  it  will  be  obvious 
that  at  one  time  the  possession  of  greater  physical  strength 
will  give  to  a  race  a  superiority  over  a  less  sturdy  folk 
which  they  may  lose  whenever  physical  strength  becomes 
unimportant  as  compared,  for  example,  with  ingenuity. 
A  particular  race  may  be  gifted  with  powers  of  govern- 
ment and  administration,  adapted  to  one  stage  of  civilisa- 
tion but  not  to  another;  and  many  more  such  variations 
of  aptness,  due  to  changes  in  economic  or  military  con- 
ditions, will  occur  to  every  reader.     It  follows  that,  within 

a  nation,  the  relative  positions  of  racial  levels  may  change 

261 


The   Crowd  in    Peace  and   War 

from  time  to  time.  The  conquered  of  one  age  may  become 
the  economic  conquerors  of  another,  and  so  forth.  Hence 
that  nation  will  have  the  securest  future  which  possesses 
within  it  the  largest  racial  variety,  each  racial  layer  being 
regarded  not  merely  as  possessing  the  gifts  which  it  best 
exercises  for  its  own  and  the  common  good  at  any  given 
time,  but  possibly  also  possessing  latent  powers  which 
at  another  stage  of  civilisation  may  prove  to  be  invalua- 
ble and  may  raise  it,  within  the  community,  to  a  social 
level  higher  than  it  was  suited  to  occupy  before. 

Allusion  has  already  more  than  once  been  made  to 
the  fact  that  a  crowd  has  only  a  limited,  not  an  indefi- 
nitely prolonged,  lifetime.  It  has,  like  any  other  ani- 
mal, beginning,  middle,  and  end.  Thus  the  rise  and  fall 
of  nations  is  a  commonplace  of  history.  Where  are  the 
Babylonians,  the  Ancient  Egyptians,  the  Minoans,  the 
Hittites,  the  Assyrians,  and  all  the  rest?  Where  is 
the  Empire  of  Alexander,  where  the  greater  Empire  of 
Rome?  They  all  began  with  a  day  of  small  things,  waxed 
to  a  maximum  of  strength,  and  each  came  ultimately  to  its 
end.  It  does  not  follow  that  a  nation  is  the  same  because 
it  occupies  the  same  area  and  consists  largely  of  the 
descendants  of  another  that  went  before  it.  The  Italian 
nation  is  not  a  continuation  of  the  Roman,  but  a  new 
crowd,  welded  into  a  unity  by  a  new  ideal.  The  modern 
German  crowd  is  not  a  continuation  of  mediaeval  or 
even  Renaissance  Germany;  it  is  a  new  crowd,  a  quite 
youthful  nation,  vigorous  with  a  new  life,  shaped  by 
an  organisation  of  novel  spirit,  and  tending  towards  a 
goal  altogether  different  from  any  that  previous  German 
crowds  tried  to  attain.     The  English  nation  is  old  be- 

262 


Overcrowds 

cause  its  ideal  is  old,  it  is  instinct  with  an  old  patriotism, 
it  follows  after  the  general  aims  of  its  forefathers,  but  it 
is  no  older  than  the  Norman  Conquest,  when  Saxon  Eng- 
land and  all  that  it  stood  for  came  utterly  to  an  end. 

Waxing  nations  and  waning  nations  must  always 
exist  side  by  side.  In  former  days  the  one  conquered  the 
other.  That  is  now  less  easy  owing  to  international 
impediments  and  the  existence  of  international  over- 
crowds. Yet  nations  still  must  die.  Their  ideals  must 
pass  away,  and  be  replaced  by  new  ones,  which  will  fashion 
the  multitude  of  individuals  living  within  a  given  geo- 
graphical area  into  a  new  kind  of  crowd,  which  will  in 
fact  be  a  new  nation.  Immigration  has  remade  Argen- 
tina. Immigration  is  likely  before  long  to  remake  Brazil. 
The  births  and  deaths  of  nations  do  not  depend  wholly 
on  wars  and  conquests;  they  can  happen  and  assuredly 
will  happen  without  their  aid  and  despite  their  impediment. 

It  does  not  follow  that  the  individuals  in  a  waxing  na- 
tion are  of  better  human  material  than  those  in  one  that 
is  waning.  Spain  cannot  now  be  called  a  waxing  nation, 
yet  where  will  you  find  a  better  set  of  individuals  than 
the  splendid  Spanish  peasantry?  You  could  match  them 
man  for  man  against  as  many  individuals  of  almost  any 
other  nation,  and  they  would  not  yield  the  palm  of  human 
worth.  It  is  not  the  Spanish  individual  that  is  lacking  in 
value  to-day,  but  the  Spanish  crowd-forming  ideal.  A 
nation  fails  when  its  ideal  is  worn  out.  Humanity  in  its 
evolution  makes  use  of  a  succession  of  ideals.  Each 
belongs  to  its  day  and  its  place.  Each  fashions  the 
people  it  animates  into  a  body  politic,  capable  of  existing 
in  power  and  health  as  long  as  the  ideal  is  alive.     Thus 

263 


The    Crowd  in    Peace   and   War 

the  Greeks,  the  Romans,  the  Franks,  the  folk  of  Islam, 
the  Turks,  and  all  the  rest,  world-scattered,  time-scattered, 
have  followed  each  their  ideal,  like  a  pillar  of  fire,  as  long 
as  the  light  shone  before  them  in  the  darkness  of  surround- 
ing fate.  When  the  light  failed  they  lost  their  respective 
ways,  or  took  to  following  "wandering  fires"  and  so  came 
to  grief,  each  by  their  special  tragedy.  But  each  in  its 
day  led  the  whole  race  of  man  onward  while  it  was  in  the 
van,  and,  as  each  failed  and  dropped  behind,  another 
was  ready  to  come  forward  and  take  its  place. 
Ss^  Thus  all  the  formative  ideals  that  have  shaped  men 
into  nations  and  other  crowds  have  served  the  increasing 
purpose  of  all  mankind.  They  have  ceased  one  after 
another  to  be  crowd-constructing  powers,  but  they  have 
remained  in.  the  individual  a  portion  of  his  separate 
inheritanceo/ko  that  to-day,  and  here  in  England,  the 
ideal  of  mighty  repose  which  fashioned  an  Empire  on 
the  banks  of  the  Nile,  the  ideal  of  strength  which  made 
the  Assyrian,  the  ideal  of  balance  which  formed  the 
Greek,  the  ideal  of  legal  order  which  inspired  the  Roman, 
may  still  animate  the  heart  of  an  individual  Englishman 
though  none  of  these  ideals  is  any  longer  exclusive  in 
fashioning  a  Nation  or  an  Empire. 


264 


CHAPTER  XVI 
WAR:   ITS  CAUSE  AND  CURE 

CROWDS  may  be  of  two  kinds:  similar  and  dissimi- 
lar. Similar  crowds  are  those  in  which  member- 
ship of  one  excludes  from  membership  of  the  rest. 
Thus  a  man  cannot  be  both  an  Englishman  and  a  French- 
man at  one  time.  Nations  therefore  are  similar  crowds. 
A  man  cannot  be  at  once  a  member  of  the  liberal  and  con- 
servative parties.  He  cannot  be  a  Roman  Catholic  and 
likewise  a  Wesleyan.  A  boy  cannot  be  at  Eton  and 
Harrow  together.  An  undergraduate  cannot  belong  to 
both  Oxford  and  Cambridge  at  once.  These  are  all 
examples  of  sets  of  similar  crowds.  But  the  same  indi- 
vidual can  be  an  Etonian,  a  Cambridge  man,  a  barrister, 
a  member  of  the  Leander  boat-club,  a  liberal,  a  Londoner, 
and  an  Englishman.  Thus  crowds  to  which  a  single 
individual  can  belong  simultaneously  are  dissimilar  crowds. 
We  can  now  state  the  axiom  on  which  the  remarks  that 
follow  will  be  founded:  All  similar  independent  crowds 
are  mutually  hostile.  Independent  crowds,  as  their  name 
implies,  are  those  that  are  not  united  together  by  any 
common  overcrowd,  nor  subordinated  to  one.  Similar 
subordinate  crowds  may  be  and  generally  are  jealous  of 
one  another  and  would  be  actively  hostile  but  for  the 
harmonising  restraint  of  their  overcrowd.  Such  inde- 
pendent crowds  as  nations,  or  as  the  great  international 

265 


The   Crowd   in    Peace   and   War 

religious  bodies,  are  independent  crowds,  and  consequently 
they  are  instinctively  hostile  to  one  another,  with  a  hos- 
tility either  latent  or  patent. 

In  what  follows  it  is  with  nations  only  that  we  shall 
be  concerned,  and  we  start  with  them  from  a  special  form 
of  the  above  axiom:  All  independent  nations  are  mu- 
tually hostile  to  one  another.  In  times  called  times  of 
peace  this  hostility  is  latent.  Its  existence  seemed  so 
obvious  to  the  ancient  Romans  that  their  word  for  a 
foreigner  was  hostis,  an  enemy.  That  was  their 
definition  of  a  foreigner  —  a  person  towards  whom  a 
Roman  was  hostile.  Of  course  hostility  may  be  of  many 
degrees,  from  the  merest  latent  distaste  up  to  the  bitterest 
active  combat  for  life  and  death.  Individuals  nowadays 
may  be  far  enough  advanced  in  true  civilisation  to  feel 
no  hostility  to  any  foreign  independent  nation,  but  the 
crowd  is  not.  The  normal  man  uttering  the  crowd- 
emotion  is  invariably  more  or  less  hostile  to  every  foreign 
independent  nation. 

Leaving  out  of  account  all  nations  and  states  which 
have  combined  into  overcrowds  or  empires,  the  inde- 
pendent crowds  great  and  small  not  so  combined  include 
the  whole  mass  of  living  humanity.  There  exists  no  single 
individual  who  does  not  belong  to  one  or  other  of  these 
independent  crowds,  nor  can  one  of  them  add  one  new 
citizen  to  its  body  by  accretion  from  without  except  at 
the  expense  of  one  of  its  rivals.  Further,  practically  all 
the  valuable  land-surface  of  the  globe,  except  the  archi- 
pelago of  Spitsbergen,  belongs  to  one  or  other  of  these 
independent  national  or  imperial  units,  and  none  of  them 
can  add  to  its  holding  except  at  the  expense  of  some  other. 

266 


War:    Its   Cause   and   Cure 

Seeing  that  all  crowds  possess  the  instinct  of  expansion 
and  that  any  one  if  unresisted  and  unsplit  would  expand 
to  include  the  whole  population  of  the  earth  and  to  own 
all  its  land-surface,  it  follows  that  the  possession  of  this 
instinct  makes  each  of  the  great  crowds  a  menace  to  all 
the  others.  All  alike,  therefore,  are  quickened  in  their 
hostility  to  the  rest  by  the  instinct  of  self-preservation. 
So  long  as  there  were  unabsorbed  populations  and  lands, 
it  was  possible  for  the  growing  national  crowds  to  increase 
at  the  expense  of  the  unabsorbed,  and  to  obtain  posses- 
sion of  new  populations  and  lands  without  depriving  rivals 
of  their  folk  or  possessions.  That  is  no  longer  possible. 
Existing  nations  are  like  so  many  bladders,  large  and 
small,  filled  with  gas,  and  all  squeezed  together  within  a 
box  which  they  unite  to  fill.  If  one  of  these  bladders  is 
to  expand  another  must  contract.  There  is  no  other  way. 
The  primitive  communities  of  remote  antiquity  (so 
far  as  we  are  informed  about  them),  like  the  savage  tribes 
of  Africa  a  century  ago,  lived  in  a  permanent  state  of  war- 
fare with  one  another.  If  they  were  not  always  actually 
fighting,  it  was  because  they  lacked  the  leisure.  As  soon  as 
a  tribe  could  spare  the  time  it  attacked  some  neighbour- 
ing tribe  and  endeavoured  to  destroy  or  engulf  it.  The 
fact  that  the  land  was  but  sparsely  peopled,  and  that 
there  were  great  vacant  spaces  as  well  as  efficient  natural 
obstacles,  like  mountain  ranges,  impassable  forests, 
swamps,  seas,  and  so  forth,  put  considerable  impediments 
in  the  way  of  this  universal  tendency  of  separate  crowds 
to  fight.  The  tendency,  however,  was  there,  and  the 
same  tendency  still  exists.  If  all  the  nations  of  the  earth 
are  not  always  fighting,  it  is  not  because  they  don't  want 

267 


The   Crowd   in    Peace   and   War 

to,  but  because  they  have  other  things  to  do,  and  also 
because  they  are  restrained  by  the  action  of  contrary 
forces.  If  every  crowd  desires  unlimited  expansion,  all 
other  similar  crowds  are  interested  to  prevent  the  expan- 
sion of  any  one.  Hence  each  national  crowd  is  operated 
on  by  two  forces,  an  internal  expansive  force  and  an 
external  resistance.  When  these  are  in  equilibrium  there 
is  peace.  The  organisation  of  this  resistance  has  steadily 
increased  in  efficiency  with  the  growth  of  civilisation, 
and  intervals  of  equilibrium  have  become  longer,  in  which 
what  is  called  the  "balance  of  power"  has  existed.  The 
balance  of  power  is  to  independent  nations  what  equal- 
ity before  the  law  is  to  individuals  —  the  guarantee  of 
national  as  of  individual  independence.  Unfortunately 
this  equilibrium  is  unstable,  and  can  only  be  maintained 
by  ceaseless  attention,  like  the  equilibrium  of  an  inverted 
pyramid  of  acrobats.  A  state  of  war,  therefore,  is  the 
natural  condition  of  independent  crowds,  and  would  be 
their  normal  state  but  for  the  impediments  placed  in  their 
way  and  continually  renewed.  It  is  not  the  cause  of  war 
that  requires  to  be  sought,  but  the  cause  of  peace. 

Though,  however,  all  crowds  are  warlike,  that  is  not 
true  of  individuals,  if  we  leave  out  of  account  all  kinds 
of  crowd-representatives,  who  incarnate  crowds,  are 
moved  by  their  emotions,  and  behave  like  them.  In 
nothing  is  the  interest  of  the  individual  more  opposed  to 
the  tendency  of  a  crowd  than  in  this  matter  of  war.  We 
must  go  back  to  a  time  earlier  than  that  of  tribal  forma- 
tion to  find  the  hand  of  every  independent  head  of  a 
family  turned  against  his  fellow.  Rudimentary  crowd- 
formation  at  once  enlisted  the  interest  of  the  individual 

268 


War:     Its   Cause   and   Cure 

on  the  side  of  peace.  Thus  if  crowds  are  the  source  of 
international  hostility  they  are  likewise  the  origin  of 
domestic  peace.  In  war  the  rights  of  individuals  dis- 
appear, and  every  individual  suffers  more  or  less.  The 
results  of  war  may  be  such  that  some  individuals  there- 
after prosper,  and  even  during  war  the  economic  interests 
of  a  few  may  be  forwarded,  but  in  the  main  the  individual 
members  of  warring  crowds  all  surfer  more  or  less,  so 
that  every  individual  who  keeps  himself  free  of  crowd- 
passion  is  almost  certain  to  be  on  the  side  of  peace  and 
against  war. 

This  is  the  second  great  restraining  force  —  the  impeding 
action  of  individuals  against  crowd-passion.  I  do  not 
refer  to  their  action  as  a  peace-crowd.  Individuals  may 
work  to  form  a  peace-crowd  and  may  have  some  success 
in  time  of  profound  peace;  but  when  the  national  crowd 
makes  for  war,  it  swallows  up  or  renders  insignificant  and 
ineffectual  all  contained  crowds  of  whatever  sort.  No 
peace-crowd  within  a  nation  has  ever  yet  availed  to  stop 
war  when  there  was  any  real  danger  of  it.  Our  own  ex- 
perience in  the  Crimean  and  South  African  wars  suffices 
to  illustrate  that  statement.  Independent  individuals, 
however,  not  formed  into  any  kind  of  crowd,  but  retaining 
their  individuality,  with  all  its  advantages  of  intelligence, 
foresight,  guile,  and  personal  initiative,  can  and  often 
do  have  a  considerable  effect  upon  a  crowd,  either  in 
helping  or  in  hindering  the  formation  within  it  of  a  given 
kind  of  opinion.  An  examination  of  the  means  and  limi- 
tations of  this  kind  of  individual  activity  would  lead  us 
into  too  much  detail.  Suffice  it  here  to  point  out  that 
individuals  going  about  their  business,  pushing  their  pri- 

269 


The   Crowd   in    Peace   and   War 

vate  enterprises,  maintaining  personal  and  intimate 
relations  with  other  individuals  in  foreign  and  potentially 
enemy  countries,  do  have  a  great  cumulative  effect  upon 
their  crowds,  and  this  effect  is  mainly  a  force  on  the  side 
of  peace. 

It  is  often  asserted  that  democratically  governed  coun- 
tries are  less  prone  to  war  than  others.  This  is  a  pure 
superstition  without  an  atom  of  fact  to  rest  on.  All 
crowds  alike  tend  to  mutual  hostility,  and  the  hostility 
proceeds  not  from  the  leaders  but  from  the  crowd  itself. 
Leaders  may  fan  the  passion  to  some  extent,  or  restrain 
it,  but  they  have  no  need  to  provoke  it.  The  crowd 
generates  a  hostile  passion  towards  a  rival  as  spontane- 
ously as  yeast  generates  fermentation.  A  democracy 
when  it  sets  warwards  is  every  bit  as  dangerous  as  a 
tyranny.  In  both  the  emotion  of  the  crowd  is  the  mov- 
ing force.  The  despot  does  not  supply  the  strength  of 
his  people;  he  merely  wields  it.  The  power  that  makes 
war  and  wins  victories  is  the  passion  of  a  people.  How- 
ever constructed  internally,  every  national  crowd  alike 
is  liable  to  the  war-passion,  which  is  always  latent  within 
it.  Democracy  possesses  no  special  virtue  of  restraint. 
Witness  the  Spanish-American  war,  a  purely  democratic 
upheaval  brought  about  by  the  crowd  itself,  in  spite  of 
all  that  its  official  leaders  did  to  restrain  it.  Gusts  of 
passion  are  the  most  frequent  cause  of  actual  war,  and  it 
is  to  these,  coming  on  suddenly  and  with  uncontrollable 
force,  that  democracies  are  especially  liable. 

Waxing  and  waning  nations  imperil  the  stability  of 
international  equilibrium  or  the  balance  of  power.  Those 
nations  are  most  imperilled  which  are  in  closest  contact 

270 


War:    Its   Cause  and   Cure 

or  rivalry  with  such  a  neighbour.  When  a  crowd,  pre- 
viously weak  or  insignificant,  becomes  impregnated  with 
some  new  and  efficient  crowd-forming  ideal  and  begins 
to  grow  with  rapidity,  the  danger  for  its  neighbours  is 
necessarily  great.  This  is  not  only  true  of  nations.  The 
growth  of  Labour,  in  organisation,  self-consciousness, 
and  consequently  in  size  and  power,  upsets  the  internal 
domestic  balance  of  forces  and  threatens  to  derange  the 
social  equilibrium  of  some  modern  states,  a  consideration 
which  we  cannot  here  pursue.  A  waxing  crowd  of  neces- 
sity presses  on  its  rivals,  and  that  pressure  cannot  fail 
to  raise  the  internal  temperature  of  those  affected,  thereby 
intensifying  their  mutual  latent  hostility,  and  still  more 
unfavourably  affecting  the  unstable  equilibrium  of  na- 
tional crowds.  Thereupon  arises  a  fever  of  diplomatic 
activity  the  purpose  of  which  is  the  readjustment  of  the 
equilibrium  by  co-ordination  of  exterior  forces  to  meet 
and  resist  the  increased  pressure  surrounding  the  growing 
body.  In  any  such  period  the  consciousness,  in  every 
affected  national  crowd,  of  its  latent  hostility  to  the  crowd 
or  crowds,  whose  expanding  force  threatens  its  integrity, 
becomes  increasingly  pronounced,  and  the  difficulty  of 
maintaining  equilibrium  is  correspondingly  increased,  till 
at  length  it  is  no  longer  able  to  be  maintained  and  war 
breaks  out.  Thereupon  crowd-emotions  explode;  the 
voice  of  the  individual  is  silenced  and  only  those  can  be 
heard  who  trumpet  for  one  or  another  of  the  competing 
crowds. 

A  waning  nation  is  likewise  a  great  danger  to  the  peace 
of  the  world,  and  for  a  corresponding  reason.  To  return 
to  our  simile  of  the  gas-bags :  if  one  of  them  shrinks 

271 


The   Crowd   in    Peace   and   War 

others  must  expand,  and  all  those  that  are  pressing 
upon  the  shrinker  will  tend  to  grow  and  fill  the  forming 
gap.  The  competition  in  expansion  thus  engendered 
produces  conditions  similar  to  those  just  described,  and 
similar  dangers  arise,  as  every  reader  can  picture  for 
himself. 

The  ultima  ratio  of  war,  therefore,  is  the  existence  of 
independent  national  crowds,  that  is  to  say  national 
crowds  not  united  by  alliance  under  any  kind  of  over- 
crowd. So  long  as  they  exist  wars  must  occur.  It  is 
their  independence  of  an  overcrowd  which  deprives  their 
necessary  mutual  hostilities  of  a  sufficiently  powerful 
counterbalancing  emotion.  In  other  words,  "war  is 
"the  only  form  of  law-suit  by  which  the  claims  of  inde- 
pendent States  can  be  asserted."  The  common  emo- 
tion whereby  the  existence  of  an  overcrowd  induces  peace 
between  subordinate  crowds,  or  enforces  it  upon  them, 
does  not  exist  in  independent  crowds.  If  they  choose  to 
attack  one  another  there  is  no  power  capable  of  prevent- 
ing them.  It  is  ultimately  only  force  that  preserves  peace 
between  similar  crowds,  and  that  kind  of  force  cannot  be 
provided  except  by  an  overcrowd. 

Even  an  overcrowd  is  not  always  strong  enough  to  keep 
its  subordinate  crowds  at  peace.  When  it  fails  to  do  so 
the  result  is  what  we  call  Revolution  or  Civil  War.  This 
occurs  oftenest  in  consequence  of  the  rapid  growth  of 
some  new  crowd.  Thus  if  the  Labour  crowd  were  to 
grow  very  much  more  rapidly  and  strongly  than  it  has 
grown  of  late,  so  that  its  ideals  came  to  possess  the  labour- 
ing class  with  a  force  much  stronger  than  that  with  which 
they   were   possessed   by   the   patriotic   national   sense, 

272 


War:    Its   Cause   and   Cure 

Labour  would  no  longer  be  a  crowd  subordinate  to  the 
nation  but  one  in  competition  with  it.  Contest  would 
then  become  inevitable  and  one  crowd  would  have  to 
overcome  the  other  as  the  result  of  combat,  physical  or 
moral,  or  both. 

It  may  be  objected  that,  in  this  case,  as  in  that  of  the 
opposition  of  national  crowds,  sufficient  allowance  has 
not  been  made  for  the  controlling  influence  and  the  am- 
bition of  leaders.  When  a  party  clamours  for  revolution 
it  desires  to  substitute  for  the  ideal  and  the  leaders  of 
the  existing  nation  its  own  ideal  and  its  own  leaders  who 
incorporate  and  express  it.  It  may  easily  be  assumed, 
perhaps  too  easily,  that  the  leaders  of  parties  out  of 
power,  who  desire  to  alter  the  ideal  of  a  nation  by  the 
substitution  for  it  of  their  own,  are  liable  to  be  more 
actuated  by  personal  ambition  to  occupy  high  place  than 
for  the  triumph  and  power  of  the  ideal  it  is  their  business 
to  express.  Certainly  all  agitators  for  change,  who  are 
or  aspire  to  be  leaders,  are  to  be  regarded  as  suspect.  The 
change  they  advocate  would  in  any  case  be  to  their  per- 
sonal advantage.  But  the  crowd  at  whose  head  they 
stand,  even  if  it  be  a  labour-crowd  calling  for  higher  wages 
and  better  conditions  of  life,  cannot  be  similarly  indicted. 
Unless  the  ideals  of  a  crowd  are  quickened,  unless  its 
aspirations  and  sympathies  are  raised  above  the  level  of 
mere  self-seeking,  it  will  not  be  a  crowd  of  much  volume 
or  force.  It  is  only  ideals,  containing  at  least  some  fine 
elements,  that  hotly  inspire  mankind.  They  may  be 
mistaken  ideals;  their  results  may  be  disastrous;  they 
may  be  imperfect  and  mixed  with  evil  elements;  but  it  is 
the  fine  part  that  is  vital,  that  spreads,  that  attracts  and 

273 


The   Crowd  in    Peace   and   War 

is  effective.  Those  leaders,  broadly  speaking,  come  to 
the  top  who,  even  if  ambitious  and  infected  with  the 
leaven  of  self-seeking,  are  in  the  main  inspired,  probably 
passionately  inspired,  with  whatever  is  fine  and  vital  in 
the  faith  by  which  their  crowd  is  quickened,  and  who 
honestly  believe  themselves  especially  adapted  to  give 
effect  to  it. 

Were  it  not  for  the  existence  of  independent  crowds,  or 
crowds  striving  for  independence,  war  would  not  spon- 
taneously arise,  and  could  not  be  brought  about  by  indi- 
viduals, however  ambitious.  If  Napoleon  had  not  had 
the  French  crowd  ready  to  his  hand,  wrought  to  the  con- 
dition to  which  the  Revolution  had  brought  it,  he  would 
not  have  become  the  portent  of  an  age.  William  II  could 
not  have  launched  the  present  war  if  the  German  crowd 
had  not  been  slowly  fashioned  to  desire  it,  partly  in  con- 
sequence of  its  own  sudden  growth,  and  partly  by  the 
spread  of  the  ideals  which  took  form  simultaneously  and 
to  a  large  degree  because  of  that  growth.  It  was  because 
the  crowd-forces  of  the  world  were  shaping  themselves 
toward  this  inevitable  contest  that  those  who  were  nearest 
the  heart  of  them,  and  therefore  most  conscious  of  their 
nature,  were  led  to  make  the  long  and  careful  war-prepa- 
rations for  which  they  have  been  blamed  by  the  short- 
sighted leaders  of  other  nations.  There  come  times  in 
the  history  of  a  world,  filled  with  independent  similar 
crowds,  when  they  cannot  be  restrained  from  falling 
upon  one  another,  by  any  existing  force.  If  peace  is  to 
be  imposed  upon  them,  it  can  only  be  by  the  creation  of  a 
new  force.  No  force  will  be  strong  enough  to  accomplish 
this  constraint  except  a  new  overmastering  ideal,  resi- 

274 


War:    Its    Cause   and    Cure 

dent  in  an  overcrowd  of  larger  dimensions  than  any  that 
has  existed  in  the  world  up  to  now. 

Where,  by  conquest  or  alliance,  crowds  previously 
independent  have  formed  an  overcrowd,  peace  has  resulted 
between  the  component  parts.  The  Pax  Romana  was 
created  by  the  Imperial  overcrowd,  and  other  great  over- 
crowds at  different  times  have  caused  large  areas  of  peace 
to  form  in  the  stormy  ocean  of  human  history.  Our  own 
relation  to  France  and  Russia  proves  the  power  of  over- 
crowdship  to  generate  goodwill  and  dissipate  the  instinctive 
hostility  of  peoples.  I  remember  to  have  been  inordi- 
nately impressed,  when  a  lad,  by  hearing  an  old  gentle- 
man, of  rather  beneficent  and  kindly  nature,  cheerfully 
and  a  propos  of  nothing  give  vent  to  the  exclamation, 
"Damn  all  Frenchmen,  say  I!"  It  would  be  hard  indeed 
to  find  a  Briton  animated  by  that  emotion  since  the  con- 
clusion of  the  Entente,  which  called  the  Anglo-French  over- 
crowd into  existence.  A  similar  change  has  taken  place 
in  the  attitude  of  the  English  crowd  toward  Russia.  A 
few  hard-shell  Nonconformists  or  doctrinaire  socialists 
may  retain  the  passion  they  absorbed  in  anti-Russian 
days  from  the  foolish  Crimean  War  down;  but 
they  do  not  count;  they  are  now  only  individuals 
with  peculiar  personal  views  and  with  no  crowd-fol- 
lowing of  any  importance.  The  national  crowd  has 
got  well  rid  of  the  emotion  that  lingers  on  in  them. 
So  too,  since  the  war,  public  opinion  has  changed  in 
relation  to  Servia,  now  admired  as  a  people  of  heroic 
nature.  Thus  it  is  also  with  our  other  allies.  The 
alliance  has   created  an  overcrowd,  not  merely  by  the 

fortune  of  war  and  the  agreements  of  diplomatists  but 

275 


The   Crowd  in    Peace   and   War 

by  the  inspiration  of  a  common  and  powerful  emotion 
shared  by  all  alike. 

The  masterful  effect  of  overcrowdship  in  creating  a 
common  ideal  throughout  two  previously  hostile  crowds 
was  well  expressed  by  M.  Leon  Bourgeois  in  a  speech  made 
on  1  May,  1915,  and  thus  briefly  reported  in  a  Reuter 
dispatch.  He  said  that  there  was  arising  in  each  of  the 
allied  states  what  he  called  "an  interior  alliance,"  which, 
putting  an  end  to  internal  friction,  brought  about  the 
triumph  of  a  higher  feeling  —  the  solidarity  necessary  to 
all  true  spirits  and  generous  hearts.  The  common  soul 
was  emerging  little  by  little,  and  becoming  the  mirror  of 
every  soul.     He  continued :  — 

"This  common  soul  must  survive  the  terrible  crisis  in 
"which  it  became  conscious  of  itself.  It  must  continue 
"to  animate  humanity  with  its  all-powerful  breath.  Let 
"us  know  how  to  express  our  will,  and,  beneath  a  sky 
"no  longer  threatened  by  storm,  in  a  Europe  in  which 
"peace  has  been  re-established,  and  by  that  we  mean  a 
"real  peace  resulting  from  the  final  victory  of  the  forces 
"of  civilisation  over  those  of  barbarism,  the  man  of  to- 
"  morrow  will  be  able  freely  to  develop  himself  in  the 
"complete  liberty  of  his  opinions  and  beliefs,  in  the  assured 
"respect  of  his  rights  and  in  the  fulfilment  of  all  his  duties. 
"Some  time  before  the  outbreak  of  this  awful  war,  it 
"seemed  as  if  the  Promised  Land  was  very  far  from  us. 
"To-day,  even  amid  the  worst  sufferings,  do  you  not 
"think  that  we  have  come  nearer  to  that  land?" 

So  long  as  a  common  crowd-compelling  emotion  binds 
into  one  any  number  of  otherwise  independent  crowds, 
war  will  not  arise  between  them;  and  this  is  the  only  force 

276 


War:     Its    Cause   and    Cure 

by  which  war  can  be  banished.  If  the  whole  world  were 
to  be  thus  united  into  a  single  overcrowd,  war  would 
cease,  so  long  as  that  union  of  crowds  lasted;  and  that 
would  be  so  long  and  so  long  only  as  a  single  ideal  ani- 
mated in  common  a  number  of  previously  independent 
crowds,  large  enough  to  impose  it  upon  all  the  rest,  if  nec- 
essary by  overwhelming  force.  Armageddon  will  be  the 
last  battle  between  the  last  two  overcrowds  into  which 
the  world  will  some  day  consolidate,  and  that  battle  is 
still  doubtless  far  away  in  the  depths  of  the  future.  When 
it  has  been  fought  the  ideal  of  the  victors  will  be  called 
"good,"  that  of  the  vanquished  "evil,"  or  in  the  language 
of  the  first  prophet  that  foretold  it,  it  will  be  a  battle 
between  Christ  and  Antichrist.  After  it  there  will  be 
peace  on  earth  so  long  as  the  overcrowd  endures. 

The  normal  process  by  which  international  overcrowds 
are  formed  is  the  process  of  agglomeration,  the  addition  of 
crowd  to  crowd,  either  by  conquest  or  by  federation,  or 
by  voluntary  alliance,  usually  for  purposes  of  defence 
against  some  other  threatening  crowd  or  overcrowd. 
Conquest  followed  by  absorption  is  the  old-world  method. 
Conquest  followed  by  compulsory  alliance  is  the  method 
tried  not  without  some  success  by  Germany  in  the  case 
of  Austria.  Germany  also  tried  to  force  England  into 
her  alliance,  as  Dr.  Bethmann-Hollweg  openly  confessed. 
The  Triple  Entente  is  an  example  of  alliance  for  defence 
against  a  waxing  crowd.  But  there  are  signs  of  another 
possible  method  of  overcrowd  formation  which  may 
"threaten  the  independence  of  nations"  —  that  dire  dis- 
ease —  in  a  future  perhaps  not  so  distant  as  might  be 
thought.     This  is  by  the  formation  of  an  international 

277 


The   Crowd   in    Peace   and  War 

crowd  which  shall  honeycomb  all  the  nations  and  wholly 
include  none  of  them,  its  aim  being  to  grow  so  strong, 
with  an  independent  life  of  its  own,  as  ultimately  to  dom- 
inate all  independent  national  crowds  and  overcrowds 
and  substitute  itself  for  and  over  them  all.  It  has  been 
attempted  for  nearly  two  thousand  years  to  form  a  world 
overcrowd  around  an  ideal  of  righteousness.  The  attempt 
has  failed.  Righteousness  may  exalt  a  nation  but  has 
never  formed  one.  Righteousness  in  fact,  like  peace,  is 
not  a  creative  but  a  consequential  ideal.  Internal  peace 
follows  but  does  not  cause  the  formation  of  an  overcrowd, 
and  so  too  righteousness  arises  in  an  organised  and  healthy 
society  but  does  not,  as  an  ideal  to  be  attained,  cause  the 
formation  of  such  a  society  on  any  world-embracing  scale; 
and  that  notwithstanding  that  it  has  been  preached  and 
propagated  by  enthusiastic  generations  of  excellent  men, 
sacrificing  their  lives  in  the  endeavour  to  extend  it  through- 
out the  world.  Similarly  the  possession  of  a  common 
humanity  has  not  amounted  to  very  much  as  an  inter- 
national crowd-compelling  force.  The  "enthusiasm  of 
"humanity"  has  ever  been  but  the  passion  of  the  elect. 
The  great  mass  of  mankind  does  not  feel  it,  and  will  not 
feel  it  till  humanity  has  been  welded  into  an  overcrowd  by 
some  more  potent  force.  That  enthusiasm  also  would 
appear  to  be  consequential  rather  than  creative.  If 
humanity  —  the  whole  race  of  man  —  could  be  threatened 
by  the  inhabitants  of  some  other  planet  about  to  invade 
the  Earth,  humanity  would  group  itself  into  a  single 
organised  crowd  fast  enough,  having  a  common  independ- 
ent exterior  crowd  to  hate  and  fear;  but  as  no  such  object 
of  common  hostility  is  as  yet  apparent,  humanity  is  not 

278 


War:    Its   Cause   and   Cure 

now  affected  by  any  common  emotion  powerful  enough 
to  weld  it  into  a  crowd  able  to  absorb  nations  and  subor- 
dinate their  several  patriotisms. 

Some  wild  persons  have  thought  that  to  obliterate 
patriotism  would  cause  the  emotion  of  our  common  human- 
ity to  take  its  place.  Such  an  one  is  M.  Gustave  Herve 
who  said :  — 

"We  are  Anti-Patriot  Internationalists,  and  have  in  no 
degree  a  love  for  the  Mother  Country.     Hence  we  do 
not  know  what  national  honour  is.     The  political  supe- 
riority of  the  French  Government  over  the  German  is 
so  slight,  on  account  of  the  similitude  of  the  economic 
and  social  organisation  of  the  two  countries,  that  it  is 
a  matter  of  indifference  to  us  whether  we  are  French  or 
German.     We  have  thus  decided  to  answer  an  order  of 
mobilisation  by  a  general  strike  of  reservists  at  first, 
and  then  finally  by  insurrection.     As  for  the  defence  of 
our  Mother  Country  we  will  give  neither  one  drop  of 
blood,  nor  one  square  centimetre  of  skin." 
Such  purely  negative  anti-nationalism  is  of  course  the 
merest   moonshine.      The   super-nationalism  of  the  dis- 
tant future  will  not  destroy  nations  but  tend  to  combine 
them,  cherishing  the  individuality  of  each,  and  not  weak- 
ening patriotism  but    rather    strengthening  and  enforc- 
ing it. 

"The  man,"  says  Professor  Karl  Pearson,1  "who  tells  us 
"that  he  feels  to  all  men  alike,  that  he  has  no  sense  of  kin- 
"ship,  that  he  has  no  patriotic  sentiment,  that  he  loves 
"the  Kafir  as  he  loves  his  brother,  is  probably  deceiving 
"himself.  If  he  is  not,  then  all  we  can  say  is  that  a  nation 
1  "National  Life,"  p.  50. 
279 


The   Crowd   in    Peace  and   War 

"of  such  men,  or  even  a  nation  with  a  large  minority  of 
"such  men,  will  not  stand  for  many  generations;  it  can- 
"not  survive  in  the  struggle  of  the  nations;  it  cannot  be  a 
"factor  in  the  contest  upon  which  human  progress  ulti- 
"mately  depends.  The  national  spirit  is  not  a  thing  to 
"be  ashamed  of,  as  the  educated  man  seems  occasionally 
"to  hold.  If  that  spirit  be  the  mere  excrescence  of  the 
"music-hall,  or  an  ignorant  assertion  of  superiority  to  the 
"foreigner,  it  may  be  ridiculous,  it  may  even  be  nationally 
"dangerous;  but  if  the  national  spirit  takes  the  form  of  a 
"  strong  feeling  of  the  importance  of  organising  the  nation 
"as  a  whole,  of  making  its  social  and  economic  conditions 
"such  that  it  is  able  to  do  its  work  in  the  world  and  meet 
"its  fellows  without  hesitation  in  the  field  and  in  the 
"market,  then  it  seems  to  me  a  wholly  good  spirit  —  in- 
"deed  one  of  the  highest  forms  of  social,  that  is,  moral 
"instinct.  So  far  from  our  having  too  much  of  this  spirit 
"of  patriotism,  I  doubt  if  we  have  anything  like  enough 
"of  it." 

Any  movement  which  proposes  to  unite  nations  into  an 
overcrowd,  without  destroying  their  individuality,  but 
only  by  limiting  their  independence  through  the  super- 
position of  some  higher  common  ideal,  is  obviously  one 
likely  to  be  beneficial  to  mankind;  but  a  movement  which 
proposes  to  sap  the  individual  vitality  of  nations  is  to  be 
regarded  with  suspicion.  The  Mediaeval  Church  thus 
threatened  what  has  proved  to  be  the  line  of  development 
which  the  people  of  Europe,  being  what  they  were,  could 
alone  follow.  When  social  Christianity  began  to  take 
shape  in  the  early  Christian  centuries  it  formed  what  at 
first  was  a  subordinate   crowd  rendering  to  Caesar  the 

280 


War:    Its   Cause   and   Cure 

things  that  were  Caesar's.  When  it  waxed  strong  and 
became  the  established  religion  of  the  Empire,  in  theory 
Christendom  and  the  Empire  became  one  —  two  aspects  of 
a  single  crowd.  Later,  when  the  Empire  vanished  and 
independent  states  arose  out  of  its  ruins,  the  Church  be- 
came an  overcrowd,  but  not  strong  enough  to  hold  the 
nations  together  as  against  a  common  foe,  when  the  integ- 
rity of  Europe  was  assailed  by  Islam.  The  Church  over- 
crowd was  strongest  in  Carlovingian  days  and  even  then 
only  moderately  efficient.  It  never  kept  rivals  at  peace 
as  the  common  Anglo-American  ideals  have  kept  the  peace 
between  the  British  and  American  Empires  for  the  last 
hundred  years,  in  spite  of  all  kinds  of  jealousies  and  con- 
flicting interests.  The  Roman  Church,  before  the  Middle 
Ages  were  over,  lost  the  small  efficiency  as  an  overcrowd 
which  it  had  ever  possessed,  and  the  Reformation  with  its 
cujus  regio  ejus  religio  put  an  end  even  to  its  claim  to  be 
such.  From  that  time  the  Roman  Church,  like  any  other 
religious  body,  has  been  international  but  not  supernational, 
nor  does  any  unbiased  person  expect  that  it  will  become 
supernational  again  at  any  future  date,  at  all  events  not  in 
its  present  shape. 

There  is,  however,  at  the  present  time  a  new  international 
movement  taking  place,  the  nature  and  prospects  of  which 
cannot  yet  be  defined.  Sometimes  it  looks  as  though  it 
were  the  manifestation  of  the  incipient  growth  of  a  new 
religion,  destined,  like  Christianity  in  the  past,  to  embody 
all  that  was  best  in  those  that  had  preceded  it.  Should 
that  prove  to  be  the  fact  it  will  not  form  a  political  over- 
crowd. The  Kingdom  of  God  can  never  be  of  this  world, 
for  the  ideals  of  mankind  will  always  transcend  mundane 

281 


The   Crowd   in    Peace   and   War 

and  temporal  limitations.  Sometimes  it  seems  as  though 
the  modern  movement,  for  the  moment  described  as  social- 
istic, would  be  purely  political.  Should  that  prove  to  be 
the  case  one  of  two  things  must  happen.  Either  it  will 
accept  the  principle  of  nationality,  as  did  the  liberalism 
of  the  last  century,  and  will  content  itself  with  inspiring 
local  developments  in  harmony  with  some  fine  human 
ideal  that  all  men  can  grasp,  thus  fostering  the  co-oper- 
ation of  nations  and  the  formation  of  a  powerful  over- 
crowd. Or,  on  the  other  hand,  it  may  set  itself  against 
the  principle  of  nationality  and  the  mighty  forces  of  pa- 
triotism; in  that  case  it  will  assuredly  go  under,  for  the 
ideal  of  nationalism  has  demonstrated  its  strength  in  our 
own  day  beyond  anything  that  could  have  been  expected 
by  our  forefathers  two  or  three  generations  back.  If 
anything  can  be  confidently  asserted  about  the  stage  of 
the  world's  history  upon  which  we  are  now  entering,  it  is 
that  no  ideal  can  possibly  now  succeed  in  forming  a  pow- 
erful supernational  overcrowd  which  does  not  make  the 
insurance  of  the  integrity  of  nations  the  very  stem  of  its 
structure. 

Whatever  the  immediate  future  has  in  store,  one  vision 
still  haunts  the  eye  of  faith  —  a  vision  of  the  ultimate 
unity  of  mankind,  and  of  a  consequent  reign  of  peace  on 
earth  and  goodwill  amongst  men.  As  in  the  past,  through 
much  tribulation  and  by  slow  accretion,  human  units 
have  been  built  together  into  ever  larger  and  yet  more 
large  integral  bodies,  thus  continually  extending  the  area 
of  peace  and  replacing  the  arbitrament  of  force  by  the 
restraints  and  decisions  of  law,  so  surely  the  crystallising 
process  must  continue.     Overcrowds  will  grow  larger  and 

282 


War:    Its    Cause   and    Cure 

fewer,  and  some  day,  far,  far  off  it  may  well  be,  the  needful 
unification  of  the  structure  of  mankind  will  be  effected, 
and  the  nations  will  not  rule  or  serve  one  another  but  will 
live  in  peace,  each  under  its  own  flag  and  all  under  the 
banner  of  a  common  and  realised  humanity. 

One  point  more  before  we  quit  this  branch  of  our  sub- 
ject. If  the  greatest  step  towards  peace  is  accomplished 
when  two  crowds  become  willingly  and  contentedly  united 
by  some  common  ideal  into  a  single  overcrowd,  it  follows 
that  nothing  is  more  disastrous,  nothing  more  retrograde, 
than  the  sundering  of  one  crowd  or  nation  into  two.  So 
long  as  the  overcrowd  is  maintained  the  kind  of  sundering 
to  which  I  refer  does  not  take  place.  Thus  to  give  Home 
Rule  to  Ireland  or  to  South  Africa  within  the  limits  of  the 
Imperial  Great  British  overcrowd  may  be  not  a  weakening 
but  a  re-enforcement  of  the  strength  of  the  whole.  Few 
foreigners  will  deny  that  if  the  various  nationalities  com- 
posing the  Austrian  Empire  had  been  given  local  inde- 
pendence the  Empire  would  have  been  strengthened.  On 
the  other  hand  if  the  United  States  had  been  divided  into 
two  independent  federations,  one  of  the  North,  the  other 
of  the  South,  the  result  would  have  been  as  mischievous 
to  both  halves  as  was  the  division  of  the  English-speaking 
race  accomplished  by  the  American  Revolution.  The 
Scandinavian  race  occupies  its  relatively  insignificant  posi- 
tion in  the  world  because  of  its  incapacity  to  form  an 
overcrowd.  Each  fraction  desires  entire  independence, 
one  of  another,  and  even  little  Iceland  manifests  the  same 
disease.  Was  it  the  Scandinavian  element  in  our  composi- 
tion that  took  the  lead  when  we  parted  company  from  the 
United  States?  or  was  it  merely  lack  of  statesmanship  on 

283 


The   Crowd   in    Peace   and   War 

both  sides?  Whatever  the  reason,  the  result  has  been  to 
weaken  the  power  of  our  race  in  the  world,  and  to  post- 
pone (who  knows  for  how  many  future  centuries?)  that 
union  of  many  peoples  under  a  common  ideal  upon  which 
peace  on  earth  ultimately  depends.  Fortunately,  even 
as  things  are,  the  English-speaking  race  is  not  without 
some  common  cement  of  idealism,  which  unites  even  its 
utterly  independent  sections  more  closely  than  they  are 
united  even  with  their  acknowledged  allies.  Death,  said 
the  Arabian  poet,  is  "the  slayer  of  delights  and  the  sun- 
"derer  of  companies."  It  is  as  true  of  crowds  as  of  indi- 
viduals. Had  it  been  possible  to  maintain  the  unity  of 
the  Roman  Empire,  without  hindering  the  development 
of  nations  within  it,  civilisation  might  now  be  a  thousand 
years  more  advanced  than  it  is.  To  discuss  the  might- 
have-beens  of  history  is,  however,  futile.  Who  can  tell 
what  might  have  been?  The  future  only  is  ours  to  fashion. 
Let  us  labour  to  establish  in  it  as  soon  as  may  be  an  over- 
mastering ideal  of  our  common  humanity,  not  in  order 
that  superior  races  and  nations  may  rule  others,  but  that 
all  may  flourish  together,  each  in  its  own  fashion,  under 
the  imposed  condition  of  universal  peace. 


284 


CHAPTER  XVII 
THE   CONTEST  OF  IDEALS 

WHEN  war  for  life  and  death  breaks  out  between 
two  crowds  their  internal  condition  undergoes 
an  immediate  decisive  change.  Instead  of  being 
rivals  and  competitors  jealous  of  and  more  or  less  distaste- 
ful to  one  another,  they  become  open  enemies  and  the 
avowed  object  of  each  is  to  destroy  the  other.  The  mean- 
ing of  the  word  "destroy"  used  in  this  connection  must 
be  examined.  No  one  will  deny  that  the  passion  of 
destruction  animates  fighting  crowds,  but  the  remarkable 
fact  is  that  it  ceases  to  animate  the  victorious  crowd  as 
soon  as  its  final  and  complete  victory  is  secured.  De- 
struction, therefore,  is  a  means,  not  an  end.  Even  in 
ancient  times  a  victorious  army  did  not  usually  slaughter 
the  defeated.  They  were  perhaps  carried  away  captive 
or  they  were  annexed.  Once  utterly  defeated  there  was 
no  desire  to  destroy  the  individuals  of  whom  the  defeated 
force  was  composed,  but  in  some  way  to  use  them.  Hence 
the  destruction  which  a  fighting  crowd  aims  at  is  not  that 
of  the  individuals  composing  the  enemy  crowd,  but  of  the 
crowd  itself,  qua  crowd,  that  is  to  say  the  disruption  of 
its  organisation,  the  ruin  of  its  structure,  and  the  over- 
throw of  its  ideal. 

A  crowd  is  strong  or  weak  according  to  the  nature  of  its 
organisation.     The  superiority  of  one  crowd  over  another 

285 


The   Crowd   in    Peace   and   War 

as  a  fighting  force  lies  in  its  better  organisation,  its  keener 
spirit,  its  higher  discipline,  its  completer  unity,  its  greater 
size.     A  mob  is  inferior  in  fighting  power  to  a  much  smaller 
body  organised  as  a  regiment.     Hence  the  purpose  of 
battle  is  to  turn  the  defeated  army  into  a  mob.     Its  struc- 
ture is  then  destroyed,  its  resistance  shattered.     Thus, 
writes  Kinglake,  "the  mere  killing  and  wounding,  which 
occurs  whilst  a  fight  is  still  hanging  in  doubt,  does  not 
so  alter  the  relative  numbers  of  the  combatants  as  in 
that  way  to  govern  the  result.     The  use  of  the  slaughter, 
which  takes  place  at  that  time,  lies  mainly  in  the  stress 
which  it  puts  upon  the  minds  of  those  who,  themselves 
remaining  unhurt,   are   nevertheless   disturbed  by   the 
sight  of  what  is  befalling  their  comrades.     In  that  way 
a  command  of  the  means  necessary  for  inflicting  death 
and  wounds  is  one  element  of  victory.     But  it  is  far 
from  being  the  chief  one,  nor  is  it  by  perfectness  of 
discipline,  nor  yet  by  contempt  of  life,  that  men  can 
assure  to  themselves  the  mastery  over  their  foes.     More 
or  less  all  these  things  are  needed;  but  the  truly  govern- 
ing power  is  that  ascendancy  of  the  stronger  over  the 
weaker  heart,  which  (because  of  the  mystery  of  its  origin) 
the  churchmen  were  willing  to  ascribe  to  angels  coming 
down  from  on  high." 

A  defeated  army  or  nation  is  one  which  has  descended 
to  a  lower  level  of  crowd-organisation  than  that  of  the 
victor.  The  defeated  may  remain  more  numerous  and 
each  individual  of  them  as  strong,  healthy,  and  able  as  the 
victorious  units:  all  that  is  nothing.  The  combat  is  not 
between  units  but  between  crowds,  as  a  duel  between  men 
is  not  a  fight  between  the  cells  of  which  they  are  built  but 

286 


The   Contest   of  Ideals 

between  the  two  organic  bodies,  and  even  more  between 
the  souls  resident  within  them.  The  death  of  an  individual 
does  not  immediately  kill  the  cells  of  his  tissue,  nor  does 
the  destruction  of  a  crowd  kill  its  units.  The  purpose  of 
war  is  to  overthrow  not  the  fighting  units  but  the  crowd 
itself. 

Before  war  can  arise  there  must  exist  two  opposing 
crowds.  That  suffices.  It  is  not  necessary  that  there 
should  be  a  definite  issue  for  them  to  fight  about.  As  a 
rule  modern  nations  seem  to  fight  for  some  principle,  and 
issues  in  politics  or  war  appear  to  arise  out  of  a  contest 
of  ideals.  Yet  it  may  be  argued  that  this  is  only  an  appear- 
ance, and  that  in  fact  it  is  issues  that  beget  ideals  as  often 
as  ideals  beget  issues.  It  has  been  said  that  any  war  is 
justified  by  a  good  cause.  It  has  also  been  claimed  that 
any  cause  may  be  justified  by  a  good  war.  Two  similar 
independent  crowds  in  contact  will  be  hostile  to  one 
another  even  if  that  hostility  is  the  only  ideal  of  which  they 
are  conscious.  This  is  evident  in  the  case  of  mobs,  which, 
if  they  do  not  coalesce  and  are  not  prevented,  always  fall 
to  fighting.  Thus,  no  sooner  had  Uruguay  finally  obtained 
its  independence  from  Spain  than  the  followers  of  the 
two  leading  local  generals  fell  upon  one  another  and 
divided  the  newly-born  nation  into  two  factions.  They 
fought  at  first  for  no  principle,  merely  calling  themselves 
Whites  or  Reds  for  purposes  of  convenience.  But  the 
parties  thus  formed  exist  to-day.  Opposing  ideals  caught 
them,  but  did  not  create  them.  The  Whites  became 
the  country  party,  the  Reds  the  party  of  the  towns;  the 
Whites  clericals,  the  Reds  anti-clericals.1     It  is  an  excel- 

1  Lord  Bryce's  "South  America,"  p.  358. 
287 


The    Crowd   in    Peace   and   War 

lent  example  of  the  fundamental  tendency  of  crowds  to 
fight,  and  to  find  out  something  to  fight  about  afterwards. 
However  much  we  may  wish  to  believe  that  great 
modern  nations  if  they  fight  will  fight  for  something  — 
some  ideal  that  they  hold  to  be  infinitely  precious  —  the 
fact  remains  that  it  is  usually  difficult,  often  impossible, 
to  define  such  a  cause  of  contention.  Wars  happen  first 
and  the  ideals  are  discovered,  or  at  least  formulated, 
afterwards.  It  is  in  the  instinctive  and  growing  opposi- 
tion of  independent  rival  crowds  that  the  explosive  sub- 
stance consists  which  any  spark  may  kindle.  A  national 
crowd,  indeed,  of  necessity  generates  a  national  ideal  and 
is  reacted  upon  by  it.  When  two  such  crowds  fall  to 
fighting  their  different  ideals  are  opposed  to  one  another, 
yet  the  war  is  not  caused  by  those  ideals  but  by  the  mere 
existence  of  the  independent  rival  crowds.  The  ideals 
that  are  tried  in  the  furnace  of  war  are  not  the  cause  of  it, 
though  they  may  contribute  to  the  victory  of  one  crowd 
and  the  overthrow  of  the  other.  Thus  at  the  present 
time,  in  spite  of  all  we  read  and  hear,  we  are  not  fighting 
Germany  for  righteousness'  sake,  but  because  Germany 
has  been  a  strongly  growing  crowd  which  upset  the  equi- 
librium of  Europe  and  aimed  at  the  hegemony  of  the 
world.  England  once  passed  through  a  somewhat  similar 
stage  when  a  vague  notion  seemed  to  be  in  the  air  that  the 
future  of  the  British  Empire  might  be  an  almost  unlimited 
growth.  That  notion  passed  away,  so  that  now  the 
British  Imperial  public  desires  no  such  future  domination, 
but  would  rather  see  the  Empire  take  its  place  as  a  mem- 
ber of  the  vaster  whole  which  the  evolution  of  civilisation 
is  preparing.     Young  Germany,  with  the  consciousness  of 

288 


The   Contest   of  Ideals 

its  own  strength  and  the  ignorance  of  inexperience  in  all 
that  concerns  the  administration  of  a  world-empire,  feeling 
the  growth  within  it  and  reaching  forth,  as  do  all  growing 
crowds,  came  to  hope  and  then  to  strive  for  the  universal 
dominion  which  the  rest  of  the  world  will  not  suffer. 
Hence  the  great  war.  Once  begun,  war  itself  reacted  upon 
both  contending  groups,  consolidating  their  overcrowdship, 
diminishing  internal  rivalries,  and  formulating  divergent 
ideals  which  became  as  it  were  the  flags  of  the  opposing 
hosts. 

The  fundamental  ideal  of  modern  Germany  is  an  ideal 
of  national  discipline  under  the  guidance  of  science;  but 
this  degenerated  in  the  popular  mind  to  a  mere  passion 
for  "Germany  over  all."  For  war-purposes  there  was 
small  temptation  to  put  forward  abstract  ideals.  The 
whole  German  movement  has  been  concrete  from  the 
beginning:  the  aim  of  all  its  discipline  and  science  being 
mere  material  wealth  and  physical  dominion.  The  "Kul- 
"tur"  they  talk  of  means  that  and  nothing  more.  The 
growth  of  this  ideal  has  been  accompanied  by  a  correspond- 
ing development  of  crowd-conceit,  which  finds  expression 
in  such  statements  as  the  Kaiser's:  "There  is  but  one 
"will  and  that  is  mine!"  or  Professor  Lassen's:  "We  are 
"morally  and  intellectually  superior  to  all  men.  We  are 
"peerless.  So  too  are  our  organisations  and  institutions." 
This  is  the  language  of  crowd-exponents.  "Kultur"  does 
not  pretend  to  include  the  German  idealism  of  the  past. 
What  it  does  include,  however,  that  is  fine  and  precious 
is  the  magnificent  national  discipline  which  the  foes  of 
Germany  should  be  the  first  to  recognise,  admire,  and 
imitate.     This  discipline  has  been  accomplished  in  the 

289 


The    Crowd  in    Peace   and   War 

process  of  German  growth,  and  has  been  accompanied  by 
the  development  of  a  strength  so  eminent  as  to  have 
engendered  in  the  common  herd  a  crowd-ideal  of  mere 
might,  which  for  the  moment  carries  them  away,  inci- 
dentally makes  them  the  enemies  of  all  the  human  race, 
and  should  unite  in  opposition  to  them  as  much  force  as 
is  needful  to  overcome  it. 

Thus  the  German  popular  ideal  induces  in  her  opponents 
a  higher  ideal  that  negates  it.  For  that  ideal  no  name  is 
required  and  none  has  yet  been  found.  The  Allies  some- 
times describe  themselves  as  fighting  for  freedom,  some- 
times for  law,  sometimes  for  righteousness;  but  the  fact 
is  that  they  are  fighting  to  save  the  structure  of  their  own 
society  from  supercession  by  the  new  disciplined  and 
socialistically  subordinated  structure  which  Germany 
has  elaborated  and  would  impose  upon  the  world  if  she 
could  conquer  it.  What  then  is  the  other  kind  of  social 
structure  which  is  in  competition  with  the  German?  What 
is  in  very  truth  the  ideal  of  the  Allies  which  this  wTar  must 
make  manifest  and  will  either  establish  or  destroy?  For 
that  is  what  wars  accomplish.  They  set  up  and  then  test 
opposing  ideals  and  the  one  that  survives  wins  an  epoch  in 
which  to  realize  itself.  Thus  the  wars  which  resulted 
from  the  displacement  of  power  wrought  by  the  Renais- 
sance and  the  consequent  discovery  of  new  worlds,  pro- 
duced religious  and  political  liberty  as  their  ultimate 
outcome  and  ended  with  the  Napoleonic  upheaval.  Those 
ideals  were  not  their  cause  but  their  consequence.  The 
cause  of  them  was,  as  always,  the  innate  hostility  of  crowds, 
and  especially  of  growing  crowds.  The  fight  produced 
the  ideals,  not  the  ideals  the  fight. 

290 


The   Contest   of  Ideals 

We  hear  much  talk  nowadays  of  the  dangers  of  German 
militarism  and  how  it  must  be  destroyed;  but  German 
militarism  is  a  mere  detail  of  the  general  and  efficient 
structure  and  discipline  of  the  German  crowd.  German 
industry,  German  commerce,  every  German  activity  has 
been  organised  on  the  same  principles  as  German  military 
power.  All  are  parts  of  a  single  structure,  an  expression 
of  a  single  crowd-compelling  force.  What  is  the  opposite 
ideal  which  the  Allies  are  fighting  for  and  which  the  war 
is  enabling  them  to  realise?  Unless  that  ideal  proves  to 
be  as  inspiring  to  them  as  the  ideal  of  disciplined  might 
is  to  the  Germans,  the  Allies  will  not  conquer.  At  the 
beginning  of  a  war  nations  will  fight  out  of  sheer  pugnacity. 
It  is  only  when  their  strength  begins  to  be  exhausted  that 
they  fight  on  for  the  sake  of  the  ideal  that  the  war  has 
generated  or  manifested.  Then  it  is  that  the  opposing 
ideals  are  tested  in  the  fire  of  national  tribulation  and  self- 
sacrifice.  It  is  the  fire  of  faith  that  ultimately  wins  in  a 
world  contest.  Germany  did  not  win  in  the  Franco- 
German  war  merely  because  she  was  the  stronger,  but 
because  France  had  nothing  particular  to  fight  for  and 
Germany  had  much.  In  point  of  strength  the  two  powers 
were  fairly  well  matched,  and  more  than  once  the  German 
position  was  perilous  in  the  extreme,  though  no  one  real- 
ised it.  Had  France  been  united  in  a  disciplined  enthu- 
siasm equal  to  that  of  Germany,  the  war  would  have  had 
a  different  termination. 

What  then  actually  is  our  ideal?  Germany's  is  a  Cen- 
tralised Discipline;  what  have  we  to  oppose  to  it?  The 
answer  is  not  easy,  for  our  ideal  is  only  now  taking  shape 
in  the  melting  pot  of  war.     The  first  principle  for  which 

291 


The   Crowd   in    Peace   and   War 

we  stand  is  for  the  variability  of  the  human  crowd.  We 
oppose  to  the  rigid  uniformity  of  Prussian  discipline,  which 
would  drill  the  world,  the  variety  and  variability  of  all  the 
national  crowds.  We  claim  for  each  nationality,  large  or 
small,  the  right  to  be  itself,  to  flourish  in  its  own  soil  after 
its  own  fashion,  to  produce  whatever  flower  of  civilisation 
arises  by  free  development  from  the  particular  plant.  We 
have  seen  the  various  states  of  Germany  suffer  from  Prus- 
sianisation.  We  have  watched  the  failure  of  attempts  to 
Prussianise  Poles  and  Alsatians.  We  have  observed  that 
Prussiandom  has  learnt  nothing  from  those  failures.  We 
have  laughed  at  the  absurdities  of  the  Captain  of  Koe- 
penick  and  shuddered  with  disgust  at  such  incidents  as 
the  cutting  down  of  the  lame  cobbler  of  Zabern  by  Lieu- 
tenant von  Foerstner.  We  know  that  thus  Prussia  would 
behave  to  the  rest  of  the  world  if  she  obtained  control  over 
it.  We  therefore  stand  for  the  opposite  of  that  kind  of 
uniform  discipline.  We  oppose  to  a  general  Prussianisa- 
tion  the  ideal  of  national  variety,  national  freedom  from 
internal  control  by  any  external  crowd.  We  in  England 
have  found  the  imperial  value  of  national  freedom  within 
the  limits  of  the  imperial  overcrowd.  We  have  seen  it 
applied  with  success  to  Canada  first,  then  to  the  other 
colonies  which  have  grown  one  by  one  into  nations,  then 
to  South  Africa,  and  last  of  all  in  prospect  to  Ireland  and 
tentatively  to  India.  We  have  also  observed  how  failure 
to  apply  this  principle  has  been  the  ruin  of  the  Turkish 
Empire  and  how  it  has  sapped  the  life  of  Austria.  Thus, 
by  long  experience  and  now  by  the  contrariety  of  war,  a 
faith  in  the  integrity  of  nationalities  has  become  part  of 

our  imperial  ideal,  part  also  of  the  common  ideal  shared  by 

292 


The   Contest  of  Ideals 

all  the  allied  powers.  The  future,  if  Germany  is  defeated, 
will  see  no  more  partitions  of  Poland,  and  is  not  likely  to 
behold  serious  attempts  to  Russify  the  Finns  or  to  French- 
ify or  Anglicise  any  nation  whatosever.  If  Germany  were 
to  become  the  overcrowd  of  Europe,  persistent  attempts 
would  be  made  to  Teutonise  us  all;  but  if  the  Allies  are 
finally  victorious,  the  nations  will  never  again  be  subjected 
to  any  the  like  peril.  One  great  factor  in  the  ideal  of  the 
Allies  may  therefore  be  named  the  ideal  of  National 
Diversity. 

National  diversity,  being  the  natural  line  of  human 
crowd  development,  can  be  prevented  only  by  dire  com- 
pulsion. It  follows  that  he  who  would  encourage  the 
diversity  of  nations  must  necessarily  be  opposed  to  the 
compulsion  of  crowds  by  the  imposed  force  of  an  over- 
crowd. This  consideration  brings  us  nearer  to  the  heart 
of  our  ideal.  Is  it  not  really  overcrowd  compulsion 
that  we  are  combating?  Is  it  not,  therefore,  volun- 
tary imperial  organisation  towards  which  we  are  uncon- 
sciously aiming?  Great  Britain  has  discovered  that  the 
strength  of  the  Empire  depends  upon  the  willingness  of 
all  its  parts  to  belong  together.  The  German  imperial 
ideal  is  the  very  opposite  of  that.  She  would  form  a 
world-empire  by  force,  she  would  organise  it  by  force, 
she  would  direct  it  by  a  single  will  to  a  single  end.  The 
ideal  of  the  Allies  can  but  be  the  opposite  of  that. 
Whether  they  know  it  or  not,  they  are  endeavouring  to 
overthrow  that  ideal  and  substitute  the  opposite.  It  is 
voluntary  as  contrasted  with  compulsory  overcrowdship 
that  are  at  grips,  and  whichever  wins  will  become  the 
type  of  world-organisation  in  the  epoch  that  is  opening. 

293 


The   Crowd  in    Peace   and   War 

But  just  as  the  Prussian  ideal  of  force,  that  is  to  say 
of  enforced  discipline  and  uniformity,  pervades  the  whole 
Teutonic  body  politic,  so,  if  the  opposite  ideal  wins,  must 
liberty  pervade  the  age  that  victory  for  it  will  usher  in: 
Liberty,  observe,  not  necessarily  individual  freedom, 
which  has  always  to  fight  for  itself  within  each  crowd. 
It  is  crowd-liberty  that  claims  extension:  not  indeed  the 
liberty  of  crowds  to  sunder  themselves  from  overcrowds, 
but  their  liberty  to  develop  internally  without  the  direc- 
tion or  control  of  any  overcrowd.  See  how  opposed  this 
crowd-liberty  is  to  the  German  ideal  of  "Germany  over 
"all,"  in  other  words  "Germany  the  world's  overcrowd"! 
If  our  ideal  were  to  prevail,  no  nation  would  be  over- 
crowd to  any  other,  but  all  nations  would  be  elements 
of  supernational  overcrowds  to  which  they  would  belong 
side  by  side,  not  one  above  another.  Not  "Germany 
"over  all,"  but  "Germany  alongside  of  all"  would  have 
to  be  the  limit  of  German  ambition  thenceforth  and 
for  ever. 

This  ideal  of  internal  crowd  independence  cannot  end 
with  nations.  Let  it  once  become  established  as  the 
root-principle  of  human  organisation  and  it  must  of 
necessity  penetrate  deeply  into  the  heart  of  social  human 
life.  The  new  age  would  develop  it,  would  find  new  uses 
for  it,  new  expressions  of  it,  and  the  outcome  would  be- 
come what  no  one  can  foretell.  Mankind,  during  the 
last  ten  thousand  years  at  least,  has  been  growing  in 
civilisation  as  the  human  overcrowds  have  increased  in 
size  and  decreased  in  number.  Progress  in  this  direction 
is  likely  to  be  continued.  But  now  it  seems  as  though 
side  by  side  with  it  a  process,  not  of  division  but  of  sub- 

294 


The   Contest  of  Ideals 

division,  may  be  set  up;  whereby  within  each  overcrowd, 
fostered  and  protected  by  it,  subordinate  crowds,  inter- 
nally independent,  may  tend  to  increase  in  number. 
Thus  the  diversity  of  the  past  which  led  to  wars  may  be 
replaced  by  a  new  and  more  precious  diversity  developed 
locally  under  the  aegis  of  peace.  The  dull  and  pitiable 
uniformity,  which  modern  civilization  tends  to  impose, 
may  then  give  way  to  a  rich  variety,  the  expression 
of  racial,  national,  and  local  differences.  The  infinite 
variability  of  individuals  may  thus  be  provided  with  a 
larger  opportunity  of  manifestation  and  expression  than 
in  an  age  of  uniformity,  such  as  the  Germanizing  of  the 
world  would  bring  about. 

Victory  and  defeat  are  not  matters  of  terms  of  peace, 
of  written  documents,  and  ratified  treaties;  they  are  a 
condition  of  the  heart  of  a  crowd.  A  defeated  crowd 
may  have  to  suffer  the  loss  of  territory  or  of  wealth;  it 
may  have  to  promise  this  or  that.  All  such  results  and 
expressions  of  defeat  are  of  minor  importance.  What 
does  matter  is  that  the  crowd's  ideal  has  been  weighed  in 
the  balance  of  the  inquest  of  the  world  and  found  want- 
ing War  according  to  the  Prussians  is  a  legitimate  politi- 
cal agency,  to  be  prepared  for  and  brought  into  being  for 
the  sake  of  the  profitable  material  results  of  victory. 
They  never  asked  themselves  what  would  be  the  effect 
of  defeat.  Now  they  have  made  war  after  long  prepara- 
tion, at  a  moment  of  their  own  choosing,  and  for  no  other 
end  than  their  national  aggrandisement.  They  have  put 
their  theory  to  the  test  of  experiment.  They  are  trying 
their  ideal  in  the  fire.  In  case  of  defeat  their  theory  will 
be  overthrown,  their  ideal  destroyed.     It  may  linger  on 

295 


The   Crowd  in    Peace   and   War 

in  the  minds  of  a  few  backward  individuals  for  a  genera- 
tion or  two,  but  they  will  be  powerless  to  inspire  a  na- 
tional crowd  with  it  so  long  as  the  human  epoch  now  being 
ushered  in  endures.  Such  is  the  effect  of  a  war  if  fought 
out  to  a  finish. 

No  nation  can  emerge  from  war  as  it  went  in.  War 
changes  both  conqueror  and  conquered.  It  tests  the  ideals 
of  both,  strengthening  that  of  the  victor  and  destroying 
that  of  the  defeated.  There  is  no  need  to  express  these 
results  in  terms  of  peace.  They  belong  thenceforward  to 
the  structure  of  nations.  Terms  of  peace  indeed,  unless 
they  involve  annexations,  are  relatively  unimportant  in 
the  long  vista  of  the  life  of  nations.  What  is  important 
is  the  change  of  national  character  that  war  may  produce. 
From  the  Franco-German  war  France  and  Germany 
emerged  new  peoples.  What  the  new  France  will  grow 
into  none  can  say,  but  its  crowd-character  is  evidently 
different  from  that  of  the  France  of  the  past.  The  new 
Germany,  the  Germany  of  the  Empire,  we  all  know,  and 
we  do  not  wholly  admire  it.  It  brought  home  from  the 
fields  of  France  an  overweening  imperial  pride,  from  which 
frightful  misfortune  may  the  Lord  deliver  us  by  victory 
in  the  present  contest !  Such  a  change  of  national  char- 
acter affects  nations  differently,  but  it  does  affect  them 
all.  If,  as  we  proudly  hope,  the  Allies  should  prove  ulti- 
mately victorious  in  the  present  struggle,  they  will  come 
forth  from  the  fire,  cast  into  a  new  mould.  Let  us  pray 
that  the  seal  of  all  that  is  noblest  in  the  ideal  developed 
in  the  war  may  be  set  upon  them  and  that  its  dross  may 
be  refined  away  in  the  furnace  of  our  present  affliction. 
That  result   alone  justifies  war  and  sanctifies  the  sac- 

296 


The   Contest  of  Ideals 

rifices  that  it  calls  for,  making  the  death  of  each  who 
falls  on  the  field,  a  rich  and  precious  contribution  to 
the  happiness  of  all  the  generations  that  come  after 
and  shape  the  fair  and  healthy  structure  of  a  nobler 
humanity. 


297 


CHAPTER  XVIII 
THE  CROWD  AT  WAR 

CROWDS  possess  every  degree  of  self-consciousness 
from  the  vague  sense  of  unity,  felt,  for  example, 
by  the  English-speaking  race,  to  the  strong  per- 
ception of  integral  social  life  in  a  regimentJr  So  soon  as 
a  crowd  realises  that  it  is  fighting  against  another,  not 
alone  for  the  life  and  death  of  its  units,  but  for  the  con- 
tinued separate  existence  of  its  corporate  self,  it  of  neces- 
sity integrates  into  as  compact  an  organism  as  it  is 
capable  of  becoming.  This  is  what  happens  to  a  nation 
at  war.  War  integrates,  peace  differentiates.  A  crowd  at 
war  should  have  but  one  purpose  —  victory^  To-  that 
end,  therefore,  it  needs  to  be  as  completely  organised  as 
a  hive  of  bees.  No  room  is  left  for  variety  of  opinion  or 
freedom  of  individual  choice.  The  common  end  must 
be  pursued  in  common  and  every  individual  must  lose 
his  freedom  and  take  his  allotted  place  in  the  organic 
whole.  A  crowd  that  can  thus  perfectly  organise  itself 
is  the  strongest  that  can  be  fashioned  out  of  a  given  group 
of  people.  In  proportion  as  a  crowd  lacks  this  capacity 
for  being  organised  it  lacks  military  might.  In  time  of 
peace  the  constraining  or  crystallising  force  within  a 
national  crowd  is  relatively  weaker,  so  that  individual 
freedom  has  and  should  have  considerable  play.  Only 
thus  can  the  intellectual  side  of  man  develop  and  mani- 

298 


The   Crowd   at   War 

fest  itself  in  the  creation  of  fine  works.  In  such  normal 
times  the  crowd  is  indeed  the  enemy  of  the  individual,  and 
their  interests  are  divergent.  But  in  time  of  war  there 
is  no  place  in  a  fighting  country  for  an  unco-ordinated 
individual.  If  his  country  is  to  attain  its  fullest  strength, 
all  must  be  co-ordinated  together,  and  individual  freedom 
must  be  in  abeyance. 

In  former  days  it  was  impossible  to  co-ordinate  for  war 
purposes  more  than  a  small  part  of  a  nation;  but  modern 
conditions  have  altered  all  that.  Now,  by  aid  of  de- 
veloped means  of  communication,  the  complete  co-ordina- 
tion of  all  has  been  rendered  possible,  and  those  countries 
which  have  devoted  themselves  scientifically  to  prepara- 
tion for  war  have  learnt  how  to  mobilise  all  the  forces  of 
a  nation  to  the  purpose  of  fighting.  If  one  combatant 
is  thus  organised,  its  enemy  must  submit  to  a  like  dis- 
cipline, j/lf  in  one  country  individual  liberty  is  entirely 
done  away  with,  in  the  interests  of  the  crowd's  collective 
power,  its  opponents  must  submit  to  a  like  suspension  of 
freedom,  or  they  cannot  expect  to  be  victorious.  Citi- 
zens, whose  individualism  is  so  strong  that  they  will  not 
submit  themselves  to  such  restraint,  must  either  be  com-^" 
pelled  to  submit  to  it,  or  should  sacrifice  their  citizenship. 
This  does  not  necessarily  mean  that  all  citizens  must 
fight.  Some  are  weaklings;  some  are  cowards;  some  can 
do  better  work  at  home  than  at  the  front;  these  and  a  good 
many  others  are  better  suited  for  the  various  kinds  of 
work  that  need  to  be  done  outside  the  fighting  line.  But 
all  must  be  ready  to  perform  the  function  indicated  for 
them  by  the  hierarchies  of  authority  that  war  should 
install.   **, 

299 


The   Crowd  in    Peace   and   War 

Of  the  powers  now  at  war,  Germany,  having  passed 
through  the  discipline  of  several  preceding  wars  within 
the  memory  of  living  men,  has  learnt  many  an  important 
secret  of  domestic  organisation,  highly  deleterious  to  the 
individual  in  times  of  peace,  but  of  supreme  value  to  the 
nation  in  time  of  war.  The  people  of  Great  Britain,  on 
the  other  hand,  have  no  remembered  experience  of  a 
national  war  for  life  and  death.  Wars  we  have  had,  but 
the  nation  has  never  within  the  memory  of  man  been 
called  upon  to  organise  its  whole  strength  for  a  war,  and 
our  insular  position  adds  to  the  detachment  with  which 
ordinary  English  people  have  been  able  to  regard  war 
throughout  the  whole  of  what  we  may  call  the  modern 
epoch.  The  long  peace  we  have  enjoyed  at  home  has 
produced  in  the  national  crowd  its  normal  disintegrating 
effect.  We  have  broken  up  at  home  into  parties,  which 
have  become,  to  many,  more  interesting  than  the  nation 
itself;  whilst  of  late  years  the  socialist-labour  party  in 
particular  has  been  far  more  interested  in  its  own  pros- 
perity, organisation,  and  political  power  than  in  the 
prosperity  of  the  nation  at  large. 

Hence  war  finds  us  internally  unprepared.  Not  only 
were  we  equipped  with  only  a  trifling  military  force,  but 
the  Government  of  the  country  had  for  years  possessed 
so  little  foresight  that  the  very  machinery  for  manufac- 
turing arms  and  equipment  for  a  large  force  did  not  exist 
and  had  not  even  been  planned  for.  It  follows  that 
whereas  on  the  call  to  arms  Germany  rose  as  one  man  to 
the  summons  and  each  individual  fitted  immediately  into 
the  place  prepared  for  him,  in  England,  when  war  struck 
us,  all  we  could  do  as  a  nation  was  to  put  our  political 

300 


The   Crowd   at   War 

oppositions  aside  and  hope  that  the  Government  would 
be  able  to  organise  the  country,  if  it  was  not  hampered 
by  a  criticising  opposition.     So  far  so  good,  but  that  was 
only  a  short  step,  which  organised  nothing,  but  merely 
removed  some  impediments  out  of  the  way  of  organisation- 
There  are  only  two  ways  whereby  a  crowd  can  be 
wrought  into  a  concentrated  organic  unity:   a  passion  of 
collective  emotion  shared  by  every  unit,  or  an  imposed 
organisation  as  elaborate  as  that  of  a  regiment.     The 
democratic  way  of  going  to  work  is  to  try  and  create  such 
a  collective  emotion;    but  that   takes  time.     The  non- 
democratic  procedure  is  to  impose  a  military  organisation 
on  all;  that  can  be  done  quickly  if  enough  leaders  can  be 
found,  able  to  work  together  and  possessed  of  the  needful 
organising  capacity.     A  universal  passion  of  self-sacri- 
ficing patriotism,  possessing  every  individual  in  the  coun- 
try so  completely  that  he  willingly  loses  his  individuality 
in  the  collective  whole,  and  offers  himself  for  any  and 
every  service,  without  question  of  wage,  or  hours  of  labour, 
or  any  limitation  whatever  except  his  own  utmost  strength 
—  such  a  crowd-compelling  passion  will  go  very  far  toward 
producing    the    needful   organisation.     At    any    rate    it 
creates  conditions  under  which  to  organise  is  easy,  whilst 
it  raises  the  power  and  efficiency  of  each  individual  to  the 
highest  degree.     Such  a  passion,  however,  will  not  kindle 
itself,  but  must  be  artfully  kindled  by  immense  and  un- 
ceasing  organised   work,   which   only   a   department   of 
government  can  nationally   supply  and  direct.     A  few 
politicians   making   a  few  well-advertised   speeches  will 
accomplish  little.     Every  village,  every  street  in  every 
town,  every  group  of  workmen  must  be  vigorously  ha- 

301 


The   Crowd   in    Peace   and   War 

rangued,  day  after  day  and  week  after  week,  if  the  whole 
national  crowd  is  to  be  wrought  up  to  the  required  white 
heat.  Short  of  such  a  domestic  campaign  the  condition 
of  the  people  will  continue  lukewarm  and  the  nation  will 
remain  weak  and  disorganised  and  will  not  deserve  vic- 
tory. The  alternative,  and  the  only  alternative,  to  this 
process  of  agitation  is  compulsory  universal  organisa- 
tion from  above.  By  some  means  or  other  a  modern 
nation  at  war  must  be  organised  as  elaborately  as  a  regi- 
ment. If  it  will  not  accomplish  this  transformation  by 
its  own  enthusiasm,  the  transformation  must  be  imposed 
upon  it  with  the  concurrence  of  that  part  of  the  popula- 
tion which  is  actively  patriotic.  Now  no  regiment  can 
be  democratically  governed.  There  does  not  exist  a 
democracy  in  the  world  that  admits  democratic  principles 
to  operate  within  its  army.  The  organisation  of  the  army 
in  the  United  States  is  as  undemocratic  as  it  is  in  Germany. 
Orders  from  above,  unquestioning  obedience  from  below 
—  these  are  necessary  in  every  army  and  they  must  be 
submitted  to  by  every  individual  citizen  of  a  nation 
at  war. 

It  follows  that  the  first  step  to  be  taken  for  national 
war  organisation  is  the  suspension  of  every  democratic 
principle  and  expedient  in  government  and  administra- 
tion for  so  long  as  the  war  lasts.  Every  man's  life  and 
powers  belong  to  the  country  as  a  whole.  Each  must  do 
what  he  is  ordered  to  do.  If  he  is  best  suited  to  fight  he 
must  fight.  If  he  possesses  skill  that  can  be  more  profit- 
ably turned  to  the  production  of  munitions  of  war,  or 
to  transportation,  or  to  office  work,  or  to  the  medical  serv- 
ice, he  must  employ  that  skill  as  ordered.     He  must  take 

302 


The   Crowd   at  War 

without  question  the  pay  given  to  him.  He  must  work 
as  many  hours  as  it  is  possible  for  him  to  work.  He  must 
abandon  every  relaxation  or  indulgence  not  essential  to 
his  fitness  for  labour.  If  he  will  not  thus  act  voluntarily 
he  must  thus  act  under  compulsion,  and  subject  to  the 
same  penalty  as  awaits  a  deserter  in  the  field. 

In  a  life  and  death  struggle  there  is  no  other  alternative. 
The  crowd  must  be  all  in  all,  the  individual  nothing  but 
a  crowd-unit.  The  fighting  crowd,  which  most  closely 
approximates  to  this  ideal,  will  assuredly  win,  other  things 
being  equal.  An  attempt  to  run  democracy  at  home  and 
war  abroad  would  be  doomed  to  failure.  If  the  Govern- 
ment has  not  the  pluck  to  do  its  duty  (convinced  that 
there  does  exist  in  the  country  enough  patriotism  to  give 
it  the  requisite  compelling  force)  it  is  a  traitor  govern- 
ment. A  war-government  that  descends  to  negotiating 
with  either  capital  or  labour  is  one  unsuited  to  command 
a  fighting  nation. 
7^  There  is  probably  no  better  or  quicker  way  to  make 
the  whole  mass  of  a  nation  understand  that  it  is  veritably 
at  war  than  by  bringing  it  at  once  and  completely  under 
military  discipline.  So  to  act  will  be  infinitely  more 
effectual  towards  kindling  the  national  spirit  than  any 
number  of  public  meetings  addressed  by  the  most  elo- 
quent orators.  Moreover  nothing  is  more  certain  than 
that  as  soon  as  a  crowd  realises  that  it  is  fighting  for  life 
and  death,  it  will  submit  to  a  kind  of  dictation  which  its 
units  would  not  willingly  suffer  in  days  of  peace.  Ob- 
serve how  trade  unions  can  dominate  and  dictate  to 
their  members  so  long  as  they  are  actively  engaged  in 
economic  contests.     An  aggressive  minority  can  always 

303 


The   Crowd   in    Peace   and   War 

drag  an  indifferent  majority  into  a  strike.  If  that  is  so 
in  semi-peaceful  oppositions,  it  is  much  more  emphati- 
cally true  in  time  of  war. "  A  government  can  then  be  as 
despotic  as  it  pleases  in  the  interest  of  victory,  and  if 
victorious  will  always  be  forgiven.  A  nation  in  danger 
of  defeat  will  destroy  a  government  none  the  less 
mercilessly  that  it  has  approached  defeat  through  the 
truckling  ofi  that  government  to  the  crowd's  own 
weaknesses.  Vl 

Jft  One  thing  can  be  securely  asserted  of  every  healthy 
nation  in  time  of  war:  the  patriotism  of  its  citizens  will 
be,  or  can  be,  raised  to  any  required  pitch  of  elevation 
if  they  are  boldly  and  wisely  led.  According  to  von 
Treitschke,  "it  is  only  in  war  that  a  people  becomes  in 
"very  deed  a  people. "v The-expression  is  clumsy  but  the 
sense  true  enough.  It  is  then  chiefly,  and  for  some  only 
then,  that  love  of  country  becomes  an  exalted  emotion  felt 
by  individuals  of  all  classes  and  ranks.  The  man  who 
then  does  not  love  his  country  is,  as  Lord  Morley  said, 
"not  only  odious  and  detestable  in  the  public  eye,  but 
"there  is  a  screw  loose  in  the  man  himself."  Or  in  the 
words  of  Kinglake,  "a  man's  love  of  his  country  is  under- 
"  stood  to  represent  something  more  than  common  benevo- 
"lence  towards  the  persons  living  within  it.  For  if  he  be 
"the  citizen  of  an  ancient  state,  blessed  with  freedom, 
"renowned  in  arms,  and  holding  wide  sway  in  the  world, 
"his  love  of  his  country  means  something  of  attachment 
"to  the  institutions  which  have  made  her  what  she  is  — 
"means  something  of  pride  in  the  long-suffering,  and  the 
"battle,  and  the  strife  which  have  shed  glory  upon  his 
"countrymen  in  his  own  time,  and  upon  their  fathers  in 

304 


The   Crowd  at  War 

"the  time  before  him.  It  means  that  he  feels  his  coun- 
"  try's  honour  to  be  a  main  term  and  element  of  his  own 
"content.  It  means  that  he  is  bent  upon  the  upholding 
"  of  her  dominion,  and  is  so  tempered  as  to  become  the 
"sudden  enemy  of  any  man  who,  even  though  he  be 
"not  an  invader,  still  attempts  to  hack  at  her  power." 

War,  even  sometimes  unsuccessful  war,  has  this  merit 
that  it  may  unify  a  people  as  nothing  else  can.  It  exalts 
their  patriotism  and  inspires  individual  citizens  with 
unselfish  ideals,  which  may  last  long  after  the  return  of 
peace.  It  is  therefore  the  duty  of  those  to  whom  falls 
the  direction  of  a  nation  during  war-time  to  foster  in  every 
way  all  the  forces  that  make  for  the  growth  of  the  sense 
of  patriotism  and  to  suppress  without  hesitation  those 
that  have  a  contrary  tendency,  by  whatever  name  they 
may  be  called.  For  the  war-crowd  is  altogether  different 
from  the  peace-crowd.  The  war-crowd  reduces  to  insig- 
nificance all  the  subordinate  crowds  within  the  nation. 
We  can  behold  an  excellent  example  of  this  in  the  deple- 
tion of  the  universities  at  the  present  war-time.  No 
English  subordinate  crowd  is  stronger  than  one  of  our 
old  universities.  Their  consciousness  of  corporate  exist- 
ence, their  pride  in  it,  their  esprit  de  corps,  are  all  of  a 
pronounced  type.  Just  as  soon  as  war  broke  out  Oxford 
and  Cambridge  were  deserted  by  practically  every  under- 
graduate capable  of  bearing  arms.  The  national  over- 
crowd swallowed  up  the  university  subordinate  crowd  at 
once.  It  was  not  in  many  cases  the  sporting  desire  to 
fight  that  led  these  youths  to  enlist.  It  was  often  a  sheer 
sense  of  duty.  "I  look  upon  the  profession  of  arms," 
said  one  of  them,  "with  unutterable  loathing.     But,  by 

305 


The   Crowd  in    Peace   and   War 

"Heaven,  I  will  not  stay  here  and  let  the  other  fellows 
"fight  for  me  without  taking  a  hand  myself."  The  na- 
tion captured  these  individuals  and  swallowed  them  up 
as  mere  units  into  itself.  Where  patriotism  prevails  the 
result  is  inevitable.  A  man  needs  no  tuition  to  be  cap- 
tivated by  that  kind  of  crowd-emotion.  Almost  every- 
body will  catch  it  if  he  be  once  incorporated,  whether  by 
choice  or  by  compulsion,  into  the  organised  body. 

Foreign  nations  compel  their  youths  into  their  armies, 
and  they  become  as  much  seized  by  the  war-spirit  as  if 
they  had  enlisted  voluntarily.  The  same  would  be  true 
with  us  or  with  any  people.  Organise  a  nation  for  war 
in  the  presence  of  war  and  a  unifying  spirit  will  pervade 
them  in  spite  of  themselves.  Shirkers  will  become  indus- 
trious, strikers  will  work  overtime.  Complaints  will 
become  insignificant  if  once  the  nation  lays  hold  upon  its 
own  and  infuses  into  all  the  spirit  of  patriotism  —  easiest 
of  all  infections  to  catch,  easiest  to  develop,  easiest  to 
direct.  But  you  cannot  negotiate  for  patriotism.  You 
must  assume  its  existence,  call  for  its  exercise  by  every  one 
without  exception,  and  then  you  will  not  fail  to  find  it. 
It  is  potentially  everywhere.  It  is  for  the  nation's  leaders 
to  direct  and  if  necessary  force  it  into  channels  of 
activity. 


306 


CHAPTER  XIX 
THE  VALUE  OF  THE  CROWD 

PHILOSOPHICAL  and  political  writers  have  sel- 
dom had  much  good  to  say  about  crowds.  The 
intellectual  impotence  of  collective  humanity  is 
obvious.  The  mob  has  so  often  appeared  in  glaring  con- 
spicuity  as  a  raging  wild  beast,  destroying  much  that  is 
precious  to  all  noble  souls.  The  faults  of  the  public  — 
its  silly  sentimentality,  its  fickleness,  its  lack  of  restraint, 
its  noisy  clamour  about  matters  often  of  small  moment, 
its  yet  more  annoying  indifference  to  others  of  vital  im- 
portance, its  susceptibility  to  the  wiles  of  demagogues,  its 
admiration  of  itself  —  these  and  countless  other  imper- 
fections and  vices  are  so  evident  that  the  impulse  of  an 
intelligent  person  must  often  be  to  contemn  and  despise 
it  as  a  beast  of  a  low  order.  Such  a  conclusion,  however, 
must  be  erroneous,  for  the  single  and  sufficient  reason  that 
the  social  instinct,  by  which  crowds  are  formed,  is  as 
essential  a  part  of  the  nature  of  every  individual  as  is  his 
individualistic  instinct.  Moreover,  if  we  consider  what 
parts  of  a  man's  nature  belong  to  him  as  an  individual  and 
what  parts  respond  to  his  condition  as  a  social  unit,  we 
are  led  to  conclude  that  his  reasoning  powers  are  a  main 
part  of  the  former,  his  emotions  of  the  latter.  It  will,  of 
course,  be  contended,  and  justly  contended,  that  man, 
as  an  individual,  not  only  reasons  but  also  enjoys  or  suffers 

307 


The   Crowd  in    Peace   and   War 

from  those  keen  emotions  which  arise  out  of  the  love  of 
one  individual  for  another,  and  that  such  emotions  are 
clearly  of  an  individualistic  sort;  yet  even  those  have 
been  elevated,  refined,  and  have  found  their  noblest  ex- 
pression in  a  social  atmosphere,  where  the  consciousness 
that  the  like  emotions  are,  or  may  be,  experienced  by  all 
other  individuals  enhances  them  through  sympathy  and 
enlarges  them  by  resonance  from  other  hearts  in  unison. 
Most  human  emotions,  however,  are  fundamentally 
social.  They  persist  only  because  they  are  shared.  All 
the  great  ideals,  the  great  faiths,  the  high  strivings,  the 
launchings  forth  towards  imagined  islands  of  the  blest 
—  these  have  been  the  gifts  of  the  gods  to  collective  hu- 
manity. The  elevation  of  the  mass  of  mankind  from  the 
level  of  brutes,  how  has  that  been  accomplished  but  by 
means  of  the  crowd?  The  flight  of  fancy,  the  revelation 
granted  to  one  man,  caught  up  from  him  by  his  followers 
as  individuals  and  spread  by  them  to  a  widening  circle, 
presently  generates  a  crowd-movement  whereby  it  is 
imposed  upon  the  laggard  mass,  who  are  thus  carried 
forward.  The  Franciscan  movement  is  an  obvious  ex- 
ample, fortunately  fully  recorded  in  its  early  stages.  We 
can  read  how  it  took  form  in  Francis  himself,  how  it  first 
entrapped  a  few  of  those  with  whom  he  came  personally 
into  contact,  then'spread  to  the  multitude,  then  formed 
and  organised  a  crowd,  by  which  it  was  carried  all  over 
Western  Europe.  The  fire  that  burned  in  Francis  became 
indeed  a  feeble  glimmer  far  away  at  the  edges  of  his 
crowd,  but  even  there  it  was  a  glimmer.  The  love  that 
welled  forth  from  his  heart  like  a  volcano  availed,  in  its 
crowd-incarnation,  to  raise  slightly  but  permanently  the 

308 


The   Value   of  the   Crowd 

general  goodwill  of  mankind.  If  to-day,  as  we  look  with 
kindness  upon  man  and  beast,  and  especially  upon  the 
unfortunate,  the  pitiful,  the  sorrowing,  and  the  bereaved, 
some  at  least  of  the  emotion  that  stirs  within  us  still 
proceeds  by  unbroken  descent  from  the  sensitively  loving 
heart  of  the  great  gentleman  of  Assisi. 

As  it  is  with  sublime  emotions  so  likewise  is  it  with 
small.  How  does  the  multitude,  many  of  whom  never 
read  a  line  he  wrote,  become  conscious  of  the  greatness  of 
Shakespeare?  That  recognition  has  been  imposed  upon 
them  by  crowd-hypnotism;  and  so  it  is  with  all  reputa- 
tions. They  are  the  ultimate  reaction  of  some  crowd 
from  the  impact  of  a  man  upon  it.  Individuals  initiate 
the  recognition,  but  a  reputation  is  not  formed  till  that 
recognition  has  been  so  imposed  upon  some  crowd  as  to 
be  shared  and  accepted  by  a  mass  of  men,  individually 
quite  incapable  of  originating  it. 

Every  revelation  comes,  and  must  come,  to  an  indi- 
vidual; the  crowd  is  the  medium  in  which  the  germ  of 
individual  emotion  is  hatched  and  spread.  Save  for 
cultivation  in  that  medium  the  emotion  would  merely 
flit  through  a  single  heart  and  disappear.  It  must  be 
deposited  as  a  fertilised  germ  in  a  suitable  soil  before  it 
can  attain  a  separate  and  spreading  life  of  its  own.  For 
such  a  life  it  needs  a  public  to  feed  on  and  root  in.  The 
fertilisation  of  all  kinds  of  cells  has  received  the  attention 
of  a  generation  of  able  biologists;  will  not  some  one  devote 
a  like  study  to  the  fertilisation  of  the  germ  of  an  ideal? 
That  likewise  proceeds  from  a  kind  of  marriage.  When 
Francis  was  born,  with  his  richly  sympathetic  nature, 
itself  the  product  of  a  previous  generation,  that  nature 

309 


The   Crowd  in    Peace   and   War 

of  his  resembled  an  unfertilised  egg.  At  some  definite 
moment  a  germ  entered  that  egg  from  without  —  some 
accident  of  an  event  beheld,  or  word  spoken  within  his 
hearing  —  and  thereupon  the  egg  was  fertilised  and  all 
the  future  was  thenceforward  potential  within  him.  Thus, 
I  hold,  it  is  with  all  new  ideals;  they  arise  at  some  point 
of  contact,  where  a  vague  possibility  is  turned  into  a 
definite  actuality  by  the  union  of  two  previously  uncon- 
nected factors.  The  histories  of  art,  philosophy,  religion, 
afford  countless  examples  of  such  happenings.  All  the 
great  schools  of  art  have  arisen  from  the  meeting  of  pre- 
viously unassociated  styles.  Ancient  Egyptian  art  was 
born  from  the  contact  of  some  invading  race  with  the 
previously  settled  population  of  the  Valley  of  the  Nile. 
Babylonian  art  had  a  like  origin  when  the  hill  folk  of 
Elam  met  Ea,  the  fish.  Where  the  inland  art  of  Asia 
Minor  came  in  contact  with  the  peoples  of  the  sea  the 
seed  of  Minoan  art  was  fructified.  Again  when  the 
peoples  of  the  North  pressed  down  on  to  the  ^Egean  and 
met  the  art  traditions  and  the  craftsmen  of  late  Myce- 
naean days,  and  likewise  came  in  contact,  through  the 
Phoenicians  and  others,  with  the  ancient  schools  of  Egypt 
and  Mesopotamia,  there  arose  by  successive  marriages  of 
these  several  ideals  that  new  and  richly  endowed  art 
which  grew  to  be  the  wonderful  product  of  classical 
Greece.  And  Greek  art  in  its  turn,  in  contact  with 
Persia  and  presently  also  with  the  civilisation  of  Rome, 
changed  in  character  and,  by  new  combinations,  gen- 
erated the  Byzantine,  the  Moslem,  and  the  Barbarian 
schools,  out  of  which  last  Gothic  proceeded.  Every  suc- 
cessive style  was  offspring  of  a  marriage,  and  each  arose 

310 


The  Value   of  the   Crowd 

within  the  area  of  some  crowd  and  took  its  life  and 
strength  from  a  social  organism. 

Thus  it  is  likewise  with  religions,  thus  also  with  schools 
of  philosophy,  and  thus  with  all  the  ideals  by  which  the 
laggard  masses  of  mankind  are  carried  forward.  Duty, 
public  spirit,  self-sacrifice,  honour,  probity,  justice,  and 
all  the  finest  flowers  of  manhood,  although  each  in  its 
turn  has  been  born  within  the  heart  of  some  individual, 
each  has  taken  root  in  a  crowd,  and  grown  and  spread  by 
crowd-agency. 

Nature's  prodigality  with  seed  is  one  of  the  common- 
places of  every  one's  observation.  "  Of  a  thousand,"  —  one 
might  perhaps  as  truthfully  say,  of  a  million,  —  "seeds  she 
"often  brings  but  one  to  bear":  and  this  is  true  also 
of  the  seeds  of  ideals.  Multitudes  of  them  are  continu- 
ally being  deposited  in  the  hearts  of  individuals,  but  only 
now  and  then  does  one  take  root  and  grow  into  visibility. 
A  microbe  only  flourishes  on  a  suitable  culture,  and  then 
it  may  flourish  with  astounding  prodigality.  Thus  also  is 
it  with  new  ideals.  In  the  Roman  Empire  what  a  profu- 
sion of  religious  notions  was  put  forth!  Each  no  doubt 
possessed  some  excellent  quality,  but  only  Christianity 
matched  its  place  and  day,  and  so  took  root,  and  rapidly 
obtained  its  ascendency  over  the  minds  of  the  multitude. 
Thus  also  was  it  with  Islam,  which  germinated  in  the  heart 
of  a  camel-driver  and  spread  victoriously  over  half  the 
West  within  a  few  generations.  It  was  not  a  unique 
product;  it  was  one  of  many  forthputtings  of  the  hungry 
Arabian  heart,  but  it  was  the  only  one  for  which  the  soil 
had  been  perfectly  prepared. 

The  infant  mortality  of  ideals  is  appalling.     They  are 

311 


The   Crowd  in   Peace   and   War 

born  in  the  hearts  of  many  of  us  and  for  the  most  part 
perish  unuttered.  Of  those  that  are  expressed,  how  few 
are  acceptable  even  to  the  few!  Of  those  that  obtain  a 
body  of  adherents,  how  few  even  transiently  touch  the 
heart  of  a  multitude!  Whilst  the  ideals  that  overrun  the 
world  and  master  whole  generations  of  mankind  are 
scarcely  more  than  the  reader  can  count.  Each  one  of 
them,  however,  has  an  endless  value.  They  may  come 
in  the  silence  of  the  night,  thrill  the  heart  of  some  lonely 
watcher,  and  swiftly  vanish  away  even  from  him;  but 
such  evanescent  visions  have  done  their  work.  Or  they 
may  be  uttered  by  him  and  find  acceptance  in  his  small 
personal  entourage,  quickening  that,  for  a  brief  moment 
perhaps,  into  keener  sensibility.  Or  they  may  spread 
yet  more  widely.  But  each  does  its  work.  Each  is  so 
far  precious  in  that  it  opens  some  little  glimpse  out  of 
the  darkness  of  mere  materialism.  Each  is  a  revelation, 
distorted,  clouded  it  may  be,  but  yet  assuredly  a  rev- 
elation of  something  further  on,  something  that  draws 
the  heart  upward,  outward,  onward  toward  the  as  yet 
unattained. 

The  shortness  of  human  life  is  the  commonest  of  com- 
monplaces. All  admit  it.  Those  who  have  passed 
middle  life  realise  it  vividly.  But  what  do  we  mean  by 
"shortness"  —  short  in  comparison  with  what?  What  is 
the  long  thing,  equally  plainly  realised  within  us,  compared 
with  which  the  life  of  a  man  is  short?  Is  it  not  the  dura- 
tion of  the  life  of  the  crowd?  The  crowd  to  which  an 
individual  belongs  lives  on  and  on,  though  he  passes 
swiftly  away.  Yet  within  him  at  every  moment  is  both 
his  own  individual  life  and  the  life  of  the  crowd.     He  has 

312 


The   Value   of  the   Crowd 

consciousness  of  both  —  his  own  short  individual  life 
and  his  share  of  the  long  crowd-life.  The  crowd  lives 
while  the  ideal  it  incorporates  endures.  When  a  great 
national  ideal  dies  a  nation  dies.  Thus  the  Egypt  of  the 
Pharaohs  perished,  thus  Imperial  Rome;  thus  also  re- 
ligious crowds,  political  parties,  and  the  rest  have  come 
and  gone,  some  lasting  longer  than  others,  but  death 
ultimately  awaiting  all. 

It  is  by  the  death  of  crowds  that  room  is  made  in  the 
world  for  the  succession  of  great  ideals,  each  in  its  turn 
an  experiment  by  which  the  whole  race  of  mankind  is 
enriched.  The  whole  area  of  the  past  is  a  great  garden  of 
various  ideals,  which  have  flourished,  each  in  its  own  bed, 
and  been  the  glory  of  a  given  time  and  place.  That  is 
what  gives  its  changeful  splendour  to  human  history. 
That  is  the  cause  of  the  infinite  variety  of  the  world's 
many  schools  and  styles  of  art.  Thence  arise  all  the 
literatures  of  all  the  ages,  each  resplendent  with  a  bril- 
liance of  its  own.  There  is  one  glory  of  the  Greek,  another 
of  the  Roman,  and  another  of  the  Arab.  Each  in  its 
turn  has  to  perish  that  the  rest  may  in  their  turn  arise. 
As  it  has  been  so  will  it  be.  The  great  nations,  languages, 
arts,  literatures,  and  all  other  products  of  the  ideals  of 
our  own  day  will  not  last  for  ever.  Some  of  them  are 
now  growing,  some  culminating,  some  failing.  All  will 
ultimately  fail  and  die  and  others  now  inconceivable  will 
take  their  place. 

An  ideal  that  arises  in  the  heart  of  an  individual  is  like 
a  spark  struck  from  steel  by  a  flint  —  gone  in  a  moment, 
unless  it  ignites  some  inflammable  mass.  An  ideal  that 
is  incorporated  in  a  crowd  is  a  burning  lamp.     It  is  only 

313 


The   Crowd  in    Peace   and  War 

a  crowd  that  can  give  continuity  to  the  combustion. 
Ideals  incorporated  in  crowds  may  be  described  as  ideals 
on  trial.  A  crowd  thus  animated  has  to  endure  or  go 
under  in  the  competition  of  the  world.  If  the  ideal  is 
in  conformity  with  cosmic  structure,  the  crowd  that 
incorporates  it  may  live  long.  If  the  ideal  is  not  in  such 
conformity,  the  crowd  will  soon  be  broken  up.  Many 
an  ideal  has  thus  been  tried  and  found  wanting;  others 
are  still  on  their  trial. 

The  German  ideal  is  on  trial  at  the  present  day.  Like 
all  the  ideals  of  great  nations  it  is  of  a  mixed  sort  and 
not  to  be  defined  in  mere  words.  Great  national  ideals 
are  only  definable  by  action  —  by  the  conduct  of  nations 
and  their  human  output,  generation  after  generation. 
As  the  German  nation  is  a  very  new  crowd  so  is  its  ideal 
a  new  ideal,  never  before  tried  as  the  motive  power  of  any 
nation.  I  have  described  it  for  shortness  as  the  ideal  of 
National  Discipline.  That  ideal,  developed,  expounded, 
and  enforced  by  Prussia,  is  undoubtedly  a  fine  one,  and 
the  war  has  manifested  its  value  in  the  sight  of  the  whole 
world.  All  the  enemies  of  Germany  are  endeavoring  to 
imitate  it  and  regretting  that  they  did  not  adopt  it  sooner. 
It  has  been  tried  and  it  has  succeeded.  If  the  Prussian 
ideal  were  that  and  that  only,  the  world  might  gladly  ac- 
cept Prussian  leadership  and  learn  from  her  an  invaluable 
lesson.  But  no  national  ideal  is  simple.  National  ideals 
are  not  so  easily  definable  and,  as  aforesaid,  are  completely 
defined  only  by  national  deeds.  The  Prussian  people 
stand  in  point  of  time  many  generations  nearer  to  bar- 
barism than  any  of  the  nations  opposed  to  them.     Thus 

Prussia  cannot  but  give  a  barbaric  form  to  her  ideal, 

314 


The   Value   of  the   Crowd 

however  fundamentally  sound  it  may  be.  Prussia,  de- 
veloped by  her  ideal  of  National  Discipline  and  greatly 
strengthened  by  it,  has  been  led  to  mistake  that  strength 
for  the  ideal  that  produced  it  and  to  worship  the  result 
instead  of  the  cause.  Hence  her  barbaric  admiration  of 
strength  for  its  own  sake,  strength  as  superior  to  good 
faith,  honour,  integrity,  justice,  humanity,  and  all  the 
other  national  virtues  that  the  course  of  history  has  re- 
vealed. The  fire  of  war,  however,  irrespective  of  which 
side  wins,  is  already  manifesting  what  is  wrong  as  well  as 
what  is  right  in  the  Prussian  ideal,  and  the  long  ages  that 
are  to  come  will  have  no  difficulty  in  deciding  the  relative 
merits  of  national  discipline  and  national  dishonour  as 
factors  in  the  present  struggle. 

I  cite  this  merely  as  an  example  of  how  the  ideals  of 
nations  are  tested  and  purified  in  the  furnace  of  inter- 
national strife,  whether  in  open  war  or  in  peaceful  com- 
petition. The  most  sensitive  man  in  Great  Britain  to 
the  condition  of  any  crowd  with  which  he  is  in  contact, 
the  most  sensitive  crowd-exponent,  is  Mr.  Lloyd  George, 
and  this  is  what  the  war  has  taught  him,  as  he  told  the 
people  of  Manchester  on  3  June,  1915:  "We  were  the 
"worst  organised  nation  in  the  world  for  this  war.  .  .  . 
"We  are  fighting  against  the  best  organised  community 
"in  the  world  —  the  best  organised,  whether  for  war  or 
"for  peace  —  and  we  have  been  employing  too  much  of 
"the  haphazard,  leisurely,  go-as-you-please  methods  which, 
"believe  me,  would  not  have  enabled  us  to  maintain  our 
"place  as  a  nation,  even  in  peace,  very  much  longer." 
That  is  how  the  sound  part  of  even  an  enemy's  ideal  gets 

established  and  understood  throughout  the  world. 

315 


The   Crowd  in    Peace  and   War 

An  ideal,  that  has  been  tried  by  a  crowd  and  has  suc- 
ceeded, thus  enters  into  the  common  stock  of  the  ideal 
of  humanity.  No  longer  has  it  need  of  a  special  crowd 
to  incorporate  it.  It  becomes  incorporated  in  humanity 
as  a  whole.  Nations  are  the  structure  of  the  human  world, 
but  what  once  belongs  to  humanity  has  no  need  of  a  mere 
nation  to  preserve  it.  What  have  been  national  ideals 
in  a  past  stage  may  become  individual  ideals  for  all 
future  time.  "We  require,"  says  Dr.  Chalmers  Mitchell, 
"variety,  different  ideals  among  which  to  choose,  and 
"freedom  to  make  our  choice."  That  is  where  the  indi- 
vidual comes  in.  He  must  be  carried  away  by  the  ideal 
of  his  own  nation  and  time;  from  that  no  man  can  escape. 
But  an  individual  is  not  confined,  as  a  nation  is,  to  a  single 
ideal.  He  can  pursue  many.  He  can  cultivate  the  whole 
gamut  of  fine  ideals  the  world  has  ever  experimented  with 
and  established.  The  total  of  these  tried  and  established 
ideals  forms  what  we  call  "the  moral  law,"  which  is  bind- 
ing upon  all  crowds  and  all  individuals  alike. 

I  cannot  do  better  than  conclude  this  chapter  with  a 
further  citation  from  Dr.  Chalmer  Mitchell's  admirable 
essay  entitled  "Evolution  and  the  War:"  — 

"I  assert  as  a  biological  fact  that  the  moral  law  is  as 
"real  and  as  external  to  man  as  the  starry  vault.  It  has 
"no  secure  seat  in  any  single  man  or  in  any  single  nation. 
"It  is  the  work  of  the  blood  and  tears  of  long  generations 
"of  men.  It  is  not  in  man,  inborn  or  innate,  but  is  en- 
"  shrined  in  his  traditions,  in  his  customs,  in  his  literature, 
"and  his  religion.  Its  creation  and  sustenance  are  the 
"crowning  glory  of  man,  and  his  consciousness  of  it  puts 
"him  in  a  high   place  above   the   animal  world.     Men 

316 


The  Value   of  the   Crowd 

"live  and  die;  nations  rise  and  fall;  but  the  struggle  of 
"individual  lives  and  of  individual  nations  must  be 
"measured,  not  by  their  immediate  needs,  but  as  they 
"tend  to  the  debasement  or  perfection  of  man's  great 
"achievement." 


817 


CHAPTER  XX 
THE  JUST  MEAN 

GEORGE  SAND  l  puts  the  following  diatribe  into 
the  mouth  of  the  revolutionary  "Everard"  (the 
lawyer  Michel) :  — 
"Tu  reves  une  liberte  de  l'individu  qui  ne  peut  se  con- 
cilier  avec  le  devoir  general.     Tu  as  beaucoup  travaille 
a  conquerir  cette  liberte  pour  toi-nieme.     Tu  Tas  perdue 
dans  l'abandon  du  coeur  a  des  affections  terrestres  qui 
ne  l'ont  pas  satisfait,  et  a  present  tu  te  reprends  toi- 
meme  dans  une  vie  d'austerite  que  j'approuve  et  que 
j'aime,  mais  dont  tu  etends  a  tort  l'application  a  tous 
les  actes  de  ta  volonte  et  de  ton  intelligence.     Tu  te 
dis  que  ta  personne  t'appartient  et  qu'il  en  est  ainsi  de 
'  ton  ame.     Eh  bien !  voila  un  sophisme  pire  que  tous  ceux 
'que  tu  me  reproches  et  plus  dangereux,  puisque  tu  es 
'maitre  d'en  faire  la  loi  de  ta  propre  vie,  tandis  que  les 
'miens  ne  peuvent  se  realiser  sans  des  miracles.     Songe 
'  a  ceci  que,  si  tous  les  amants  de  la  verite  absolue  disaient 
'  comme  toi  adieu  a  leur  pays,  a  leurs  freres,  a  leur  tache, 
'non  seulement  la  verite  absolue,  mais  encore  la  verite 
'relative  n'auraient  plus  un  seul  adepte.     Car  la  verite 
'ne  monte  pas  en  croupe  des  fuyards  et  ne  galope  pas 
'avec  eux.     Elle  n'est  pas  dans  la  solitude,  reveur  que 
'tu  es!     Elle  ne  parle  pas  dans  les  plantes  et  dans  les 

1  "Hist,  de  ma  Vie:"  Paris,  1899;  Vol.  IV,  p.  342. 
318 


The  Just   Mean 


"oiseaux,  ou  c'est  d'une  voix  si  mysterieuse  que  les  hommes 
"ne  la  comprennent  pas.  Le  divin  philosophe  que  tu 
"cheris  le  savait  bien  quand  il  disait  a  ses  disciples:  'La 
'"ou  vous  serez  seulement  trois  reunis,  en  mon  nom,  mon 
'"esprit  sera  avec  vous.'" 

This  eloquent  passage  poses,  as  so  many  other  writers 
and  speakers  have  posed,  the  great  problem  which  each 
one  of  us  has  to  face:  Where  are  we  to  draw  the  line 
between  our  duty  to  ourselves  and  to  one  another  indi- 
vidually, and  our  duty  to  the  crowd?  A  pure  individual- 
ist must  atrophy  into  an  entirely  barren,  selfish,  and 
ultimately  miserable  being.  An  uncritical  socialist,  who 
is  the  mere  unit  of  a  crowd,  must  be  a  narrow-minded 
bigot,  the  slave  of  his  surroundings,  the  voice  of  every 
current  of  public  emotion,  the  flotsam  and  jetsam  of  the 
stormy  ocean  of  life.  Individualism  against  socialism: 
that  has  been  a  contest  waged  within  men  and  mankind 
from  the  remotest  ages.  It  is  the  great  domestic  issue 
for  most  of  the  progressive  nations  at  the  present  day. 
Neither  of  the  two  contending  principles  can  ultimately 
succeed.  A  wisely  living  individual  and  a  wisely  con- 
structed polity  alike  must  combine  both  in  a  balanced 
equilibrium,  and  this  because  man  is  neither  a  wholly 
gregarious  nor  a  wholly  non-gregarious  animal.  The 
service  of  mankind  by  each  and  the  free  development  of 
the  individual  within  no  narrow  limits  have  both  to  be 
kept  in  view.  The  socialist  and  the  individualist  alike 
must  fail  because  each  would  effect  one  of  these  ends  by 
destroying  the  other.  It  is  as  absurd  to  be  a  socialist 
as  to  be  an  individualist.  No  sane  man  can  help  being 
an  individual  and  passionately  desiring  individual  free- 

319 


The   Crowd  in    Peace   and   War 

dom;  neither  is  it  possible  for  him  to  avoid  capture  by 
various  social  organisms.  He  is  of  necessity  both  an 
individual  and  a  social  unit  simultaneously.  Hence  the 
wise  man  must  aim  at  the  attainment  of  a  condition  which 
shall  be  a  mean  between  individualism  and  socialism. 
He  must  be  both  individualist  and  socialist  at  once.  He 
must  strive  for  the  development  of  himself  as  an  individual 
and  at  the  same  time  for  the  development  of  the  organic 
crowds  he  belongs  to  as  crowds.  He  must  not,  however, 
agree  to  starve  himself  for  the  sake  of  a  crowd,  nor  must  he 
neglect  his  duty  to  crowds  for  his  own  ease  and  pleasure. 
In  practical  politics  he  must  take  a  middle  line. 

Morris  criticised   Rosetti  for  being  too   much  of  an 
individualist.     "I  cannot  say,"  he  wrote,  "how  it  was 
that  Rosetti  took  no  interest  in  politics.  .  .  .  The  truth 
is  he  cared  for  nothing  but  individual  and  personal 
matters;   chiefly  of  course  in  relation  to  art  and  litera- 
ture;  but  he  would  take  abundant  trouble  to  help  any 
one  person  who  was  in  distress  of  mind  or  body;    but 
the  evils  of  any  mass  of  people  he  could  not  bring  his 
mind  to  bear  upon."     Morris  himself,  on  the  contrary, 
erred  in  the  other  direction  and,  as  Mr.  Clutton  Brock 
avers,  "was  always  more  concerned  about  general  evils 
"than  about  the  troubles   of  individuals,   and   in  that 
"respect  he  belonged  peculiarly  to  his  own  age." 

The  greatest  men  and  the  culminating  periods  of  civili- 
sation have  attained  a  temporary  equilibrium  between 
individual  freedom  and  crowd  subservience.  Too  much 
individualism  is  characteristic  of  times  of  enterprise  and 
growth;  too  much  socialism  of  times  of  suspended  activity 
or  slow  decay.     It  is  the  free  individual  who  has  the 

320 


The  Just   Mean 


courage  to  think  for  himself,  to  plan  and  organise,  to 
launch  forth  into  the  unknown  world  of  thought,  of  faith, 
or  of  action;  but  it  is  the  social  organism  destined  to  sur- 
vive him  which  holds  and  transmits  whatever  part  of  his 
achievement  the  individual  has  been  able  to  impress  upon 
it.  A  citizen  as  such  is  a  mere  cell  of  a  crowd;  a  free 
individual  may  at  any  moment,  through  a  flash  of  insight, 
become,  if  only  for  a  moment,  a  crowd-leader.  Thus,  as 
I  now  write,  I  am  doubtless  for  the  most  part  only  ex- 
pressing in  more  or  less  connected  form  the  ideas  that  are 
vaguely  floating  about  in  the  minds  of  the  public  of  my 
day,  but  now  and  then  I  may  chance  to  set  down  some 
new  idea,  born  out  of  contact  between  those  others,  which 
may  strike  some  of  my  readers  as  true,  may  by  them  be 
transmitted  onward,  and  may  ultimately  become  a  tiny 
part  of  the  general  ideals  of  a  future  day.  Any  of  us  at 
any  time  may  make  a  light  remark,  the  product  of  a 
moment's  intuition,  which  may  chance  to  be  heard  by 
others  and  so  to  influence  one  or  two,  who  may  hand 
it  on,  and  thus  passing  from  mouth  to  mouth,  it  may 
spread  throughout  the  human  organism.  All  the  great 
movements  of  the  world  have  started  from  such  insig- 
nificant seed. 

Some  would-be  prophets  have  bidden  us  slay  within 
ourselves  what  they  call  the  great  evil  which  devours  us 
—  personality;  or  as  Hartmann  put  it,  "l'abandon  com- 
"plet  de  1 'individuality  au  processus  cosmique  pour  que 
"celui-ci  puisse  atteindre  son  but  qui  est  la  deliverance 
"generale  du  monde."  Alas!  the  cosmic  process  alone 
will  accomplish  no  such  deliverance.  Moreover,  deliver- 
ance would  be  death.     Life  is  in  the  struggle  (alike  within 

321 


The   Crowd   in    Peace   and   War 

the  individual  and  within  humanity  as  a  whole)  between 
the  individualistic  and  the  social  instincts  and  tendencies. 
St.  Paul  felt  it,  and  the  pain  of  the  strife.  He  found 
within  himself  the  two  laws  at  variance.  He  felt  that 
"other  law  in  his  members  warring  against  the  law  of  his 
"mind  and  bringing  it  into  subjection,"  and  he  cried 
aloud,  "Oh  wretched  man  that  I  am!  Who  shall  deliver 
"me?"  No  one  will  ever  deliver  us.  The  double  nature 
of  man  will  always  endure  and  will  always  be  at  variance. 
To  live  is  thus  to  suffer;  the  more  developed  the  life,  the 
greater  the  suffering.  Buddhism  tells  us  that  this  suf- 
fering can  be  avoided  only  by  a  total  abandonment  of 
individuality  and  absorption  of  the  individual  in  what  is 
in  fact  the  universal  crowd.  It  is  a  cowardly  escape. 
The  individual  must  incessantly  fight  to  maintain  his 
individuality  and  to  shun  that  entire  absorption.  Yet 
in  so  fighting  the  wise  man  will  avoid  going  to  the  other 
extreme.  He  will  regulate,  in  the  words  of  Pater's  Marius 
"what  he  does,  still  more  what  he  abstains  from  doing, 
"not  so  much  through  his  own  free  election,  as  from  a 
"deference,  an  'assent,'  entire,  habitual,  unconscious, 
"to  custom  —  to  the  actual  habit  or  fashion  of  others, 
"from  whom  he  could  not  endure  to  break  away,  any  more 
"than  he  would  care  to  be  out  of  agreement  with  them  on 
"questions  of  mere  manner,  or,  say,  even  of  dress." 

But  if  the  wise  man  will  thus  in  his  actions  conform  to 
the  prejudices  and  ideals  of  the  crowd  to  which  he  is  con- 
tent to  belong,  he  will  never  allow  it  to  govern  his  thoughts 
or  imprison  his  faith.  It  was,  I  suppose,  the  provocation 
of  such  threatened  dominance  over  the  mind  rather  than 
the    heart,    that    called    forth    the    following    energetic 

322 


The  Just   Mean 


protest  from  Emerson  in  his  essay  on  the  "Conduct  of 

Life":  — 

"Leave  this  hypocritical  prating  about  the  masses. 
Masses  are  rude,  lame,  pernicious  in  their  demands 
and  influence,  and  need  not  to  be  flattered,  but  to  be 
schooled.  I  wish  not  to  concede  anything  to  them,  but 
to  tame,  drill,  divide,  and  break  them  up,  and  draw 
individuals  out  of  them.  The  worst  of  charity  is  that 
the  lives  you  are  asked  to  preserve  are  not  worth  pre- 
serving. Masses!  The  calamity  is  the  masses.  I  do 
not  wish  any  mass  at  all,  but  honest  men  only,  lovely, 
sweet  and  accomplished  women  only,  and  no  shovel- 
handed,  narrow-brained,  gin-drinking  million  stocking- 
ers  or  lazzaroni  at  all.  .  .  .  Away  with  this  hurrah  of 
masses,  and  let  us  have  the  considerate  vote  of  single 
men  spoken  on  their  honor  and  their  conscience." 
Emerson  would  have  agreed  with  that  disgruntled  Greek 

who  had  engraved  on  a  kotyle,  found  at  Chiusi, 

"This  man  said  that  the  folk  were  a  bad  lot." 

The  folk  are  in  truth  an  imperfect  lot,  but  so  too  is  every 
individual;  fortunately  the  imperfection  of  the  one  is  the 
counterpart  of  the  strength  of  the  other.  The  crowd  is 
weak,  or  rather  lacking,  in  mind;  the  individual  is  gifted 
with  reason  which  may  be  developed  to  any  extent,  if 
kept  untrammelled  by  crowd-prejudice.  The  individual 
is  liable  to  be  selfish  and  unemotional,  strong  in  science 
but  weak  in  faith;  the  crowd  is  made  and  maintained 
by  enthusiasm.  The  individual  mind  should  be  concerned 
with  the  discovery  of  truth ;  the  collective  mind  with  right 
feeling.     Hence  it  is  the  duty  of  the  wise  man  to  keep  his 

323 


The   Crowd   in    Peace   and   War 

mind  free  from  crowd-dominance  in  relation  to  all  matters 
of  fact  and  truth,  but  to  yield  to  crowd-influence  where  he 
can  share  its  healthy  emotion.  Not  all  crowd-emotions 
are  sound;  far  from  it.  Nora,  in  Ibsen's  "Doll's  House," 
whom  Helmer  had  accused  of  not  understanding  the  society 
in  which  she  lived,  replied:  "No,  I  don't.  But  I  shall 
"try  to.  I  must  make  up  my  mind  which  is  right,  society 
"or  I."  The  individual's  intelligence  must  decide  as  to 
the  Tightness  of  any  crowd's  tendencies  and  admiration; 
where  he  can  share  them,  with  the  approval  of  his  own 
reason,  let  him  do  so  whole-heartedly;  but  where  he  is 
convinced  that  the  crowd  is  wrongly  inspired,  he  must 
courageously  withdraw  himself  from  it,  even  unto  martyr- 
dom, saying  in  the  noble  lines  of  Frederick  Myers: 

"Yea  with  one  voice,  O  world,  tho'  thou  deniest, 
Stand  thou  on  that  side,  for  on  this  am  I." 

In  emotion  then  we  may  be  of  the  crowd,  but  in  thought 
should  be  crowd-free;  such  is  the  law  of  the  Just  Mean 
as  it  applies  to  the  individual.  What  is  the  form  of  that 
law  as  applied  to  the  crowd  itself?  Where  should  the 
line  be  drawn  dividing  the  two  areas  within  which  the 
individual  is  free  or  crowd-controlled  respectively?  At 
one  extreme  lies  complete  individual  freedom,  such  as 
was  enjoyed  or  rather  suffered  by  prehistoric  man  and 
equally  backward  peoples  of  our  own  day,  like  the  now 
vanishing  Fuegians.  At  the  other  extreme  lies  a  com- 
plete crowd-despotism,  such  as  that  exemplified  by  a 
hive  of  bees,  —  an  intolerable  tyranny.  Let  us  hear 
what  Mr.  G.  S.  Lee  has  to  say  about  it :  — 

"The  most  perfect  states  are  found  among  the  social 

324 


The  Just   Mean 


"insects,  foremost  of  which  are  to  be  mentioned  the 
"honey-bees.  This  society,  which  man  has  had  under 
"domestication  so  many  thousand  years  that  the  begin- 
ning has  been  forgotten,  has  won  the  admiration  of  the 
"world,  and  poets  and  philosophers  have  immortalised 
"it  with  their  words.  What  could  appear  more  perfect? 
"Each  member  of  the  society  is  apparently  free,  and  each 
"labors  for  the  common  good.  Truly  it  seems  an  ideal 
"state;  but,  to  attain  this  ideal  state,  queens  must  kill 
"their  sisters  or  be  killed  by  them;  thousands  must  be 
"relegated  to  ceaseless  toil,  and  kings  exist  but  for  a  day. 
"This  perfect  state  consists  only  of  a  queen-mother  and 
"thousands  of  sexless  slaves.  All  exist,  not  for  their 
"own  individual  pleasure,  improvement  or  happiness,  but 
"only  for  the  community.  If  socialists  will  study  this 
"and  other  examples  of  states  which  have  resolutely 
"worked  out  the  social  problems  to  a  successful  finish  they 
"will  perhaps  get  an  inkling  of  how  far  off  is  the  realisa- 
tion of  all  Utopias." 

Neither  of  these  extremes  will  men  tolerate.  Unsocial- 
ised  they  cannot  attain  civilisation;  over-socialised  they 
cannot  attain  individual  development.  Where  is  the 
line  to  be  drawn? 

The  question  presses  for  consideration.  I  am  not  re- 
ferring to  the  actual  period  of  war,  because  in  war-time 
the  nation  is  admittedly  everything,  the  individual  noth- 
ing. The  last  half  century  has  been  and  the  century 
that  is  to  come  will  be  compelled  to  consider  and  solve  this 
problem :  Where  is  the  line  to  be  drawn  between  individu- 
alism and  socialism?  On  that  issue  political  parties  must 
presently  divide,  one  tending  in  one  direction,  the  other 

325 


The   Crowd  in    Peace   and   War 

in  the  other.  There  will  be  no  lucid  politics  until  that 
division  is  plainly  manifest  and  recognised.  The  confused 
politics  of  the  last  fifteen  years  have  been  due  to  the  fact 
that  old  party  issues  were  dead.  Almost  every  impor- 
tant social  measure  introduced  of  late  has  been  accepted 
in  principle  by  both  parties,  and  quarrelled  over  in  detail 
for  the  sake  of  keeping  the  parties  alive  by  having  some- 
thing to  quarrel  about.  The  fundamental  divergence  by 
which  the  people  were  actually  divided  —  the  eternal 
opposition  between  the  two  tendencies  which  run  to  pure 
individualism  in  one  direction  and  developed  socialism 
in  the  other  —  this  was  not  the  dividing  line  between 
parties,  for  both  included  separate  sections  animated 
by  these  opposing  ideals.  Hence  an  inevitable  confusion 
of  issues  and  policies,  and  cross-currents  of  opinion  which 
did  not  coincide  with  the  division-lists. 

Moreover,  in  all  parties  in  the  House  of  Commons  of 
late  years,  the  socialistic  faction,  by  which  I  mean  the 
group  of  men  whose  ideals  tend  in  the  direction  of  social- 
ism, was  stronger  than  the  individualistic;  and  thus  it 
came  about  that  socialistic  measures  were  neither  properly 
criticised  on  consistent  and  reasoned  grounds,  nor  were 
they  strenously  opposed  by  an  organised  anti-socialist 
opposition.  The  criticism  they  met  with  was  sporadic 
and  disorganised.  Hence  socialistic  measures  were  passed 
into  law  in  a  crude  and  in  many  respects  unworkable 
form,  and  they  consequently  produced,  when  put  into 
operation,  about  as  much  harm  as  good. 

The  important  fact  that  has  to  be  constantly  borne  in 
mind,  by  those  who  interest  themselves  in  broad  present- 
day  political  and  social  problems,  is  the  enormous  growth 

326 


The  Just   Mean 


of  the  crowd  in  power  and  organisation  during  the  last 
hundred  years.  That  growth  is  the  distinguishing  fea- 
ture of  the  nineteenth  century.  There  was  never  anything 
like  it  before  in  the  history  of  the  world,  nor  in  fact  could 
there  have  been,  for  the  conditions  that  made  it  possible 
did  not  previously  exist.  The  size  to  which  a  crowd  can 
grow  depends  upon  the  certainty  and  ease  of  communica- 
tion between  its  parts.  The  scientific  achievements  of 
the  nineteenth  century  effected  improved  means  of  com- 
munication such  as  the  world  had  never  imagined  before; 
and  that  development  still  continues.  The  civilised 
peoples  of  the  world  may  now  be  said  to  live  almost  in  the 
presence  of  one  another.  A  public  man,  by  means  of  the 
daily  press,  can  to-day  address  not  merely  the  people  of 
a  locality,  or  even  of  a  nation,  but  civilised  humanity  at 
large.  Movements  consequently  affect  vaster  aggrega- 
tions of  mankind  than  ever  before.  A  political  move- 
ment is  no  longer  local  or  even  national.  A  wave  of 
similar  political  movement  passes  almost  simultaneously 
over  all  progressive  nations.  Witness  the  world-wide 
extension  of  the  temperance  movement  as  one  example. 
Thus  the  formation  and  organisation  of  all  kinds  of 
crowds  has  become  easy  where  before  it  was  extremely 
difficult,  and  on  a  very  large  scale  impossible.  An  over- 
whelming enthusiasm  alone  availed  to  set  on  foot  the 
Crusades,  which,  from  a  modern  point  of  view,  were 
insignificant  expeditions.  If  a  similar  enthusiasm  existed 
to-day  it  would  put  the  whole  of  Europe  and  America  in 
movement  on  a  gigantic  scale.  For  these  reasons  the 
power  and  importance  of  all  kinds  of  crowds  are  much 
greater  to-day  than  ever  before,  and  each  crowd  in  some 

327 


The   Crowd  in    Peace  and   War 

degree  limits  the  freedom  of  the  individuals  composing  it. 
Fashion  in  clothes  may  be  cited  as  an  instance  of  the 
extension  of  crowd-dominance  over  the  individual.  The 
crowd  has  always  exercised  dominion  in  this  matter,  but 
till  about  a  century  ago  the  power  was  in  the  hands  of 
local  crowds,  and  costume  consequently  varied  from 
one  locality  to  another.  Now  the  whole  western  world 
dresses  alike;  and  changes  in  fashion  spread  with  aston- 
ishing rapidity  by  aid  of  the  press  and  of  modern  commer- 
cial organisation.  As  the  crowd  changes  its  clothes  so  it 
changes  its  ideals.  Waves  of  common  interest  and  com- 
mon emotion  similarly  spread,  and  each  of  them  as  it 
passes  helps  to  unify  the  civilisation  of  that  mass  of  man- 
kind which  is  within  the  area  subjected  to  modern  scien- 
tific methods  and  ideas.  Large  parts  of  the  population 
of  Asia  and  Africa  are  still  outside  the  pale,  but  every 
decade  sees  the  western  ideal  more  and  more  dominant. 

This  growth  in  the  power  of  the  crowd  at  the  expense 
of  the  individual  has  produced  many  important  changes 
in  the  point  of  view,  not  only  of  the  public,  but  of  indi- 
viduals. "Half  a  century  ago,"  wrote  Mazzini,  "all  the 
"boldest  and  most  innovating  theories  sought,  in  the 
"organisation  of  societies,  guarantees  for  free  individual 
"action;  the  State  was  in  their  eyes  only  the  power  of 
"all  directed  to  the  support  of  the  rights  of  each."  That 
must  for  ever  remain  one  of  the  chief  functions  of  a 
healthy  state.  Of  late  years,  however,  it  has  tended  to 
be  overlooked,  and  unless  that  tendency  be  arrested 
tyranny  must  follow.  "We  thirst  for  unity,"  continues 
Mazzini,  "we  seek  it  in  a  new  and  larger  expression  of 

"mutual  responsibility  of  all  men  towards  each  other, — 

328 


The  Just   Mean 


"the  indissoluble  co-partnery  of  all  generations  and  all 
"individuals  in  the  human  race.  .  .  .  We  seek  the  har- 
"mony  and  meaning  of  the  worth  of  individuals  in  a 
"comprehensive  view  of  the  collective  whole.  Such  is 
"the  tendency  of  the  present  times,  and  whosoever  does 
"not  labour  in  accordance  with  it,  necessarily  remains 
"behind."  Collective  Duty  has  in  fact  become  a  leading 
modern  ideal,  that  is  to  say  the  submission  of  the  indi- 
vidual to  some  collective  aim,  which  may  involve  the 
subordination  of  his  own  development  to  the  development 
or  prosperity  of  some  crowd. 

It  all  sounds  very  fine  and  is  superficially  attractive. 
The  most  commonplace  orator  can  grow  eloquent  about 
it,  and  almost  any  assemblage  of  people  can  be  made  to 
go  wild  with  applause  at  the  glib  expression  of  this  kind 
of  sentimentality.  But  behind  all  this  crowd-enthusiasm 
lurks  the  hideous  demon  of  despotism.  The  gilded  sur- 
face of  ce  quon  voit  hides  the  grimy  disillusions  that  reside 
in  ce  quon  ne  voit  pas.  Cheap  sympathy  for  the  so-called 
unfortunate  or  unfit,  as  a  class,  is  so  easy  to  feel.  One 
can  swell  with  emotion  as  one  votes  some  one  else's  money 
to  relieve  it.  It  is  quite  a  different  thing  to  follow  the 
law  of  Christ  and  be  helpful,  not  with  mere  money  alone, 
but  with  work  and  self-sacrifice  and  sympathy,  to  in- 
dividual sufferers.  There  is  little  glory  in  that  —  no 
marching  forth  at  the  head  of  a  shouting  majority  after 
a  triumphant  division,  by  which  some  sentimental  though 
logically  absurd  piece  of  legislation  has  been  added  to  the 
burden  under  which  thenceforward  the  country  has  to 
labour. 

Raise  a  man  to  a  position  of  power,  after  a  period  of 

329 


The   Crowd   in    Peace   and   War 

competitive  examination  in  stump-speaking,  during  which 
he  has  been  profuse  in  promises  to  the  multitude  of  the 
distribution  of  other  folk's  goods  amongst  them;  put  into 
his  hand  authority  over  the  political  machine  that  controls 
the  votes  of  a  majority  of  the  representatives  of  the 
people;  it  will  then  be  easy  enough  for  him  to  dictate 
and  enforce  the  enactment  of  any  measure  of  so-called 
social  reform,  provided  it  be  large  enough  to  strike  the 
imagination  and  pretentious  enough  to  engage  the  un- 
critical enthusiasm  of  a  nation  already  bewitched  by 
demagogic  wiles.  By  such  means,  quite  as  efficiently  as 
by  German  militarism,  can  (to  wrench  from  its  context  a 
phrase  of  Mr.  Asquith)  "the  intelligence  and  spontaneity 
"of  a  people  be  fettered  and  hampered  by  the  State."1 
It  is  unnecessary  here  to  retra verse  the  ground,  covered 
in  a  former  chapter,  where  we  dealt  with  the  Crowd  and 
Government.  We  were  there  led  to  conclude  that  the 
function  of  the  Crowd  in  relation  to  government  should 
mainly  be  to  inspire  a  legislature,  infecting  it  with  the 
ideals  to  be  pursued,  and  investing  it  with  the  power  to 
give  them  practical  and  legislative  form.  As  it  is  with 
government  so  is  it  with  the  general  relations  of  an 
individual  to  the  crowd.  The  crowd  may  control  the 
emotions  but  should  have  no  sway  whatever  over  the 
reason  of  the  individual.  When  the  crowd,  whether  it 
be  a  religious  or  a  political  organisation  or  any  other, 
attempts  to  control  the  liberty  of  the  individual  reason, 
that  is  to  say  the  liberty  of  the  individual  to  act  as  his 
reason  directs  (provided  that  in  so  acting  he  does  not 
act  in  a  manner  contrary  to  what  is  wholesome  and  right 

1  House  of  Commons,  8th  June,  1915. 
330 


The  Just   Mean 


in  the  spirit  of  the  crowd  to  which  he  belongs)  —  when  the 
crowd  does  or  attempts  to  do  this,  it  invades  the  freedom 
which  every  individual  has  a  right  to  possess  and  enjoy. 

It  is  of  course  possible  for  individuals  to  invade  the 
proper  province  of  the  crowd  and  to  impose  by  individual 
power  —  the  power  of  great  wealth,  for  instance  —  limi- 
tations upon  the  noble  ideals  and  high  aspirations  of  the 
crowd.  In  that  case  individualism  will  have  gone  too 
far.  Possibly  the  astonishing  growth  of  crowd-power 
in  modern  times,  contemporary  as  it  has  been  with  the 
advance  of  science  and  the  greatly  enhanced  might  attain- 
able by  individuals,  has  been  nothing  more  than  a  main- 
tenance of  the  equilibrium  between  individualism  and 
socialism  which,  it  may  be  contended,  existed  before 
advancing  science  disturbed  it.  Certain  it  is  that  it  is 
now  possible  for  individuals,  not  as  wielding  the  power  of 
responsible  government  but  merely  by  the  acquisition  or 
control  of  wealth,  to  attain  possession  of  a  degree  of  actual 
power  over  their  fellow  creatures  such  as  can  scarcely  be 
paralleled  in  any  other  age.  The  corresponding  growth  of 
crowd-power  could  not  perhaps  be  avoided.  Yet  the 
number  of  powerful  —  if  you  like  to  call  them  so,  over- 
powerful  —  individuals  whom  the  crowd  has  to  protect 
itself  against  are  few;  but  all  citizens  fall  together  under 
the  dominion  of  the  developed  crowd  and  lose  some  of 
their  freedom  to  it.  Tyranny  may  be  at  hand  at  any 
moment,  when  its  coming  is  least  expected,  and  of  all 
misfortunes  that  mankind  can  suffer,  crowd-tyranny  is 
the  worst  —  crowd-tyranny  controlling  the  actions  of 
our  lives  and  worse  still  controlling  the  freedom  of  our 
thoughts. 

331 


The   Crowd   in    Peace   and   War 

Splendid  indeed  have  been  and  still  remain  the  great 
ideals  which  mankind  has  collectively  striven  for  and, 
by  striving  for,  has  enabled  to  be  formulated  and  to  enter 
the  hearts  and  become  fabric  of  the  conscience  of  all  noble 
individuals.  By  crowd-forming  ideals  the  lower  masses 
of  mankind  have  been  and  are  being  elevated,  and  by 
them  only.  The  masses  of  humanity  are  not  to  be  raised 
by  intellectual  effort,  nor  by  science,  nor  by  the  labour 
of  individuals;  they  can  be  elevated  by  the  infection 
of  fine  ideals  only,  and  to  these  and  the  crowds  that  have 
incorporated  them  the  great  advance  from  the  beast- 
level  to  where  we  stand  has  been  due.  But  in  the 
heritage  of  the  world  no  less  precious  are  the  noble  lives, 
the  high  intellectual  accomplishments,  the  great  works, 
and  the  splendid  deeds  of  individual  men:  and  they,  not 
those  only  who  have  occupied  high  public  position  and 
loomed  large  within  the  vision  of  their  contemporaries, 
but  still  more  the  forgotten  multitudes  of  separate  and 
variously  gifted  individuals,  who  have  followed  each 
his  own  star,  who  have  lived  and  laboured  each  under 
the  guidance  of  his  own  reason,  who  have  faced  the  world 
with  fearless  confidence,  each  in  his  own  resources  and 
powers,  and  who  in  art,  in  literature,  in  philosophy,  in 
scientific  discovery,  in  courageous  action,  or  in  masterful 
direction,  have  shown  how  beneficent  may  be  the  life  of 
an  independent  human  unit  in  effecting  great  results, 
which  no  crowd  could  either  conceive  or  bring  to  fruition. 
Great  is  Mankind,  but  great  also  is  Man. 
ov8ev  avdpwTrov  Savdre/oov  tt(Xu 


332 


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